Warning: Contains graphic content & adult themes.
Many people say they would love to relive their twenties. Not me. My twenties saw me giving birth, giving up the child for others to call her daughter, flipping my truck, giving birth to my son, testifying against my father in a heart-breaking trial, and living in the emotional cage of an abusive relationship. I worked multiple part-time jobs and clawed my way through school. No matter what I did, I could not get ahead. My past haunted me and my present plagued me.
I had no escape and no outlet. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the idea of ending it all began to take form. I could not imagine how my life could ever turn out okay. I was completely mired in despair. Since it couldn’t show on the outside, all of the fear and hurt turned inward. This, in turn, made the depression even worse and sent me in such a downward spiral that the vague form in the back of my mind started taking a real form.
My thoughts dwelt on how I would end my life. Every time an idea would take shape, however, intense fear stayed my hand. Even then, I couldn’t even do that properly. I began having lucid nightmares. As if my waking hours were not bad enough, sleep was no longer a place of safety. Some of the worst nightmares, like the one below, followed me from sleep to waking in the form of hallucinations.
I think it’s safe to say that this was officially my lowest point. This suicidal fear was also what pushed me into finally allowing hints of my wreck of an emotional state to eek out. A short time later, antidepressants entered stage right and slowly, ever so slowly, life began turning around. The change did not come in time to save me, though. Images like those in Theatre of Fears had already burned themselves into my being. I don’t know that I will ever really be rid of them.
Theatre of Fears
What do I fear?
A play of the worst before me
In my dream I saw them
Sitting in the rows
Waiting with applause to watch
The actors speak their parts
They strut and sing and say their lines
We ooh and ahh and laugh and cry
As the actors cue us.
As colored blood begins to flow
From buckets up the stage
And each of us are touched with visions
Each sees his own and we fear each other
The blood still flowing at our feet
Then all pointing, all laughing at me
And I stand before them
I feel a gun pressed to my head
And all out there enjoying the scene
I cannot find the words to plead
So I stand helpless there and muted.
Then I am no longer there
But lost and terrified
I hear my own voice but the words do not come from me
The voice is listing out my fears
One by one they’re mentioned
Each one marched before my eyes
I am powerless to stop them
As if I am on trial
And each are witnesses against me
Fire raging up before me;
Locked in a room with death
Pale faces watching, blaming me;
And the blood, it is still flowing.
Eyes like moons, round and unclosing
Until the flame engulfs us.
Then high on a tower
My heart coming out of my chest
Hands on my back and as I fall
I turn in time to see the sneering face—
The one who pushed—
Of one I often loved.
Instead of falling down to death
The scene replays time and again,
And I relive the pain of recognition.
The blood still at my ankles
Staining me for life forever
It occurs to me to cry
To find I am already
And the heat of my cheeks
And pounding in my ears is real
As I enter the fringe of waking
For a moment, there I am
And again I hear my voice
I am clearly speaking out my fears
Repeating
As if listing out my sins
So vivid then I hear them
Brandished out for all to see
Pain pushes me into waking
And I cry all the harder for it.
Even though my eyes are open
The visions still are with me
I hear my breath and see pitch black
Nothing visible to welcome me back
But there I am lying in bed
I reach out my arms beside me
To feel for the casket I was just in
Only a moment ago
The walls are not there
I am not dead
My trial by fear ended, though not
For in the dark I still hear my voice
Calling out the fears one by one
And remembering…