The Full Release

 

CHAPTER I: SILENCE

 

She awakes. Gasping. Crying. Holding in a silent scream. She sits up in bed, struggling against the sea of covers that surrounds her. She crouches with her knees pulled in. All is pitch black, and all is silent. She heaves. Shaking. Mumbling. “It’s okay, you’re okay.” She’s holding herself together, yet it feels as if the slightest bit of air may blow her away. She shivers. Tears are streaming down her face. Her mind is whirling from this dream to that. All subjective, all useless, all redundant. 

It’s a nightmare that never seems to cease. A void that never seems to fill. A voice that never seems to speak. A dream in which she can’t awake. She breathes. But it was never a dream, only a memory. A memory she tried to bury deep within the vortex of her mind. Yet dark nights arouse dark thoughts. Teetering on the edge of sanity, she rises. Carefully treading towards a window, she raises her palm and touches the cool glass tenderly. She then presses her ear to the pane and listens to the sounds in the abyss. But in this darkness of night, she knows she’ll never hear a sound. 

 

CHAPTER II: PAIN

 

She stands. In silence by the window slowly backing away from the glass. She gently lets her arms hug herself. Dazed, she begins to panic. She’s breathing hard. Her warm breath fogging up the window pane. Slowly disappearing and reappearing with every breath. Feeling trapped she scurries to open the window. And with a frantic whoosh, a sharp pang of cold night air seeps into her chest. Freezing her fears and cooling her anxiety. 

She walks across the room, in the dark, towards the shadow of a desk lamp. And with a familiar rhythm she flicks the light on. Beside the lamp lye’s a journal. Her fingers twinge over its binding. She picks it up, sits on the floor, and writes. Slowly at first as if she’s gathering coherent thoughts. Trying to articulate them into words. Trying to formulate a pattern of language. She writes about her dreams and how it attaches to the memories that flood through her mind. 

A seven-year-old girl that reminds her of herself. Dead. In her coffin. Best friends they were. A speech at a funeral she wasn’t prepared to give. A memory she wont soon forget. A father. Abusive. Punch after punch. Shushing her to silence. Forcing her to smile. Guiding her to destruction. A mother who wouldn’t understand. And a male friend. Turned enemy. Freshman year of high school, he sexually assaulted her. Before her prime. Before she could even know herself. 

She writes. She writes until the pattern of language becomes vague, and the lines begin to blur. Her chest burns. But she’s not sure if its from the biting cold drifting from the window, or the ever-defiant pain that lives in her heart. 

She writes until the carpel tunnel in her hand fumes. And until her ankle has fallen asleep. She writes until the tears she didn’t realize she was shedding, drip and soak through the collar of her shirt. She writes until the glitter that once was her soul, withers and becomes all but dust. She writes until she’s not just numb from her pain, but she grows from within it. 

 

CHAPTER III: ACCEPTANCE

 

She stops. And with a sigh, she lets her pen fall out of her hand, and roll along the carpeted floor. Through writing, her mind has been cleansed, her heart has been bandaged, and the dust of her soul has been blown away. Only to arise once more as glitter. 

She now sits and stares at the pages in front of her. Her words are so scribbled they can’t be read. But its okay. She doesn’t plan to re-read her story, she already knows it. She only plans to move forward. But as for now, she sits still, drawing her feeble knees to her chest as she mumbles. “It’s okay, you’re okay.” She stays in this position for a minute. 30 minutes. An hour. And when she musters up the strength and can no longer stand the cold, she rises to turn off the desk lamp. And walks over to the window to shut it.

 But before she does, she peers at the now darkened room and stares out at the somber suburban landscape and wonders. “Who else feels like me?” She whispers this question to herself in the dark. And with a mere hesitancy she climbs into bed. Fearful of the next dream to come. Regretting the past but accepting the dark abyss that awaits her under the covers. An abyss that she’s willingly climbed back into.  

 

EPILOUGE 

 

She is me. I am she. And there are no three words I love better than the ones that made me. The words that plague my past guided me to my future. I grew in silence. Lived through pain, and gradually gained acceptance. The irony is, the dark in my life, led me to the light. I found writing. I found myself through language. Asking a future linguist which her three favorite English words are, are like asking a scientist which his/her favorite discoveries are. I can’t distinguish a favorite because I need all parts of speech to describe myself. But I can say this. To fight a silent rebellion, you will need hope to find a voice. To suffer through pain, you will need joy to guide you. And to grasp acceptance, you will need to trust faith. All in which I was able to do by writing. So, who knows where the future may lead me. But I hope it leads me to a life worth living. All I know is that when I look back, because I will, I guess I can say I got through it all by applying three words to the chapters of my life. Hmm. Who knew. I guess a linguist can have favorite words after all. 

 

Hope, Joy, and Faith.