Sarah travels gracefully through minefields.
She awakens in the morning shade side of the room she rents. Eyes openly slowly, cautiously, afraid to see what diminishing items she owns have vanished over night.
Hangover so immense it tries to cleave her brain in two. Throbbing pain in temples, mouth drier than the Sahara, she coughs, gags and heaves nothing but stomach acid onto the floor. Cockroaches scurry about yet some are trapped in the tequila and stomach acid vomit as it hits them squarely. Try as they might, they’re toast and will soon die. The rats, on the other hand, will indulge on the dead roaches in due time.
Sarah, looking down, brushing her matted brunette locks aside, thinks idly: Serves ya right! Why should be the only that suffers?
She finds the energy to pull her too thin legs over the side of the bed and attempts to stand. The soiled pink tank top she wears rides high, exposing breasts that resemble deflating balloons, layers of overlapping flesh with nipples.
Rats and mice take notice and hurry to their safe places. Rats and mice are sharp learners in the realm of survival.
She of extremely slender frame, falls back into the bed, head spinning, pulsating, in grand pain, yet no different than many of the yesterdays she’s known in her twenty six years.
Need shower, she thinks, catching whiffs of her odors mixed with the recent fire smell from down the hall and the pesticides House Control use with no effect.
She rises without falling. Baby steps, one foot in front of another as if never to have walked before, she aims toward the bathroom. Veering into the entertainment center that once held her flat screen, blue ray, and stereo, hip connecting sounding, she flinches not. The numb have no feeling. The numb don’t care what happens to their body.
Sarah enters the bathroom and hits direct sunlight. She takes off the filthy tank and goes to remove her panties. She sighs, looking down. Another morning without having them on, what did I do last night, she ponders. Eyes tightening, muscles on her face become pronounced, tears wanting to leave yet unable to as she bites down hard, wishing not to feel them on her cheeks.
Her expression of sadness gives way to a look of hope as she stares at the sun.
This is a new day, she says to the shattered mirrored across from her. Things can be different this time. Things can get better. I can do this. I can try. I hope.
I hope, she says in a voice of both a whisper and a whimper. I can’t keep failing forever, right?
Turning on the water, she steps into the moldy shower.
Water covers her like a total baptism. Mouth opens to the showerhead, drinking deeply to waste the cottonmouth that threatens to seize her throat. Her body takes in the surrounding warmth as water courses over her. She takes the mildew covered washcloth off the paint-chipped windowsill into her hands and applies a liquid soap.
Fading green eyes closed, she begins to wash herself faintly noticing dogs barking in the alley and exhaust smells from the rising morning rush hour.
It’s 8AM on someday of some week during some month in another year for her.
Sarah, after spending 45 minutes sifting through much dirty body covers finds some clean things to adorn herself with. Putting on the perfume an old boyfriend bought her months, mayhap years ago to substitute for deodorant which she hasn’t had in months, smile on face, she ventures out to this brand new day of sunlight.
Walking to another point of possible employment, digging deep to bring both positive attitude and confidence to bear, through yet another clear glass doorway, striding forward.
Fills out an application like the hundreds she’s done before.
She has references to place to paper. Those that would grant her experience from jobs past most imaginary: given by the weakest of friends in the lands of addiction with cell phones and those that owe her, mostly through sexual favors, she tries.
With vibrant long flowing brunette hair rolling over broad shoulders, shrouding her gaunt face, she answers questions from the nondescript interviewers that challenge her. The confidence she shares with them grant her a job.
A job that she will be fired from through her emotional outburst and tyrannical behavior.
This job, granting her at least a months worth of starting wages, gives her the peace of mind to keep the sad room to sleep in, with its cockroaches, mice and rats. This tired place to lay her head to awaken with hope.
This infinitesimal world to grant her little more than a desperate, miserable sustenance to live a bit more. Hope a shrinking tad more with each day that passes.
To get a paycheck, hit a bar or crack house, letting men buy her delights that will numb her as she lets them take advantage of her. Remembering not what happened after work, waking up each next sunlight feeling numb, semi naked and alone.
To fail when depression grasps her, lashing out to hurt others on her paranoid defense or maybe attempt to kill herself again.
Failing at both, she always awakens another morn. Tries. Attempts.
Sarah fails like a skipping record of a sad tune, yet picks herself up like some Phoenix of the eternally damned and tries with less strength than the day before.
Each day is a rerun. Each day is the same.
She forgets months, years, and proceeds down avenues of broken dreams remembering not the hours, days, years before. Learning nothing.
Each morn, waking more tired than the one before, yet dredging her soul forward, she tries.
And strikes out at the plate every time.
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Authors note: The above story was my words. The thoughts behind this was given to me by someone that read my Mondays Facebook post asking for those that had something of personal history with either BPD or a family/friend story on this.
The person that sent me the information and their observations asked me to put their words like what I wrote in the Cracker Barrel Massacre entry to Psychopathy: Another Life. A third person description into what I see when I read, sense and take in what those that feel for someone they love and cry for. To those that are utterly powerless to assist this person with, yet watch all the same.
Futility squared.
Or as this person so eloquently put: Watching a human train wreck in the slowest of motion, sobbing heart out and failing all the same.
Granting me the privilege of a first name he wished to publish.
Viktor, the first to send me an email. Your email came within five hours of Mondays 06/25/2012 post. Thank you very much. I can, in some respects, sense your pain through the words you shared with me. You truly are someone of feeling. A man of humanity towards someone you deeply care for and love.
Thank you, Viktor!
Mark William Darus 06-27-2012 in EST, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.
This is the music i played while writing this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q1zTneO46Y