daily

She considered death daily

The slow release of all that emotion
like the air gently pushing its way out of an old balloon
seems like such relief.

the loneliness, the pain of memory, the torture of anticipated future,
they weighed on her
even as a child

everyone feels this way, she thought
everyone has this moment when they just want to cry
because they are so terribly disappointed by themselves
or by the world
or what they believed was god.
they just won't admit to it.
of course this only fueled her fear, that no, no one else felt this way on a regular basis.

She was not born with thick skin, instead she was born with hardly any skin at all.
She had no easy defenses,
even the wind was a distraction,
she responded to the minute expressions of the adults and children around her.
her mothers slight smirk, fathers wink of a frown, the firm disapproval that washed across grandmothers face like the shadows of clouds, these things scared her as a child.

As an adult she had to learn to build her own thick shell,
to help the things roll off that otherwise would seep right in.
Sometimes it worked, but often it did not.
Everything hurt and everything seemed disappointing in the end.

Lying in bed she would imagine the life slowly leaving her,
all that emotion that welled up inside would slowly drip out her finger tips and onto the floor,
all the thoughts and expectations would float out of her mouth up to the ceiling and out the window.
all the heavy sadness and loneliness would sink and sag through the bedding until it thudded onto the floor like lead weights.

and this was how she survived her every living day.