Photo by Wil Stewart
He closes his eyes.
He's trying to think, he's trying really hard to focus, but he has nothing.
No, it's isn't nothing, it's something. Something hard, something brittle, something sharp. It's like shards of glass have broken inside his stomach and are making their way to his head. There's a lump in his throat like someone stuffed a tennis ball down it and it got stuck. 'The fucking lump, why can't I get rid of it?'
He scratches his head. Rage burns inside him.
He yearns for peace. Not peace in the world, not external peace, just peace inside of him; but these emotions burn inside him and they just won't let him breathe.
How nice it would feel to take a deep breath, to let go, he thinks. Yet he is holding on so tightly it feels impossible to release. It's like he's clutching onto something because it's the only thing he knows. There's deep fear of letting it go, even though he knows it's what he needs to do. He is fully aware that it no longer serves him!
He scratches himself as if he is trying to shed his skin but he just can't reach the itch. He wants to scratch it all off, but it's deeper. He wants to dig right into his gut and clean it out from the inside, but he can't so he keeps on scratching.
He can't breathe. He feels so small. He feels like a huge boulder is pressing down on him and he's just too weak to push it away.
It's his damnation, for he has sinned. Now he has to carry this weight on him because there's no way he can forgive himself for what he has done. It doesn't matter that he doesn't really know what he did. It doesn't matter that he was too young to understand, too innocent to know. He's still guilty. It's still his fault. He still deserves to suffer for the rest of eternity for it.
There's a little version of him that clutches on to this shame as if it were his mother. As if it were what keeps him safe from the world. The adult version turns to him and asks him if he is willing to hear a different story, but the little boy clutches onto it like his life depended on it.
For some odd reason, the little boy just can't separate the two. The mother and the shame are one of the same. He doesn't understand that she doesn't blame him. That she would never blame him. All he knows of the world is how he killed his mother. All he knows of the world is that if he hadn't existed, his mother would still be alive.
How he wishes he didn't exist. How he wishes he could stop existing for good and never have to burden the world with his presence ever again.
It's not how he wanted it to be. He loved his mother so much, and yet he was torn apart from her before he had the ability to form his own thoughts.
Why did it have to be me and not her, he keeps thinking to himself. He would happily trade his life for hers, but he can't.
His mother had been stoned to death for the crime of committing adultery.
(To be continued)