The Memory of Light

This strange feeling of not belonging, this sense that every task, even the smallest one, is unpleasant and requires effort — this is how my days will be here. And how many days like this will there be? Will I make it? Do I have it in me to wiggle through the crushing rocks? Right now it doesn’t feel like I do. I feel as if a week, a month from now, sooner or later, I will say no to life again. I will say no to these days.

“I knew you were quiet and sad sometimes, but I never imagined it was that serious.”

“I did a pretty good job at pretending I was all right.”

When all is dark around you,
I’m the memory of light.

One of the things I learned at Lakeview is that pain that is not acknowledged, talked about, shared even, doesn’t ever go away. It hides for a while and then comes back in a different form.

What is my hope? And how can it survive the months and years ahead of me in this room, with this family, in this life?

I’m not sure I can. It seems like an impossible task, and it occurs to me that what is still perched in my soul, what is still there, is that familiar feeling, hopelessness.

I feel like an old-fashioned scale, like the kind Lady Justice holds in her hand in front of courthouses. On one tray there’s everything good I have gathered at Lakeview and the ranch, and on the other are those parts of my life that are not changing, that I will need to live with — the things that drove me to the deed in the first place. Guess which way the scale is tilting?

“How are you?”

I feel like crap, I want to answer. Instead, I say, “I’m fine.” I’m lying again. Do I want to start lying again?

Dr. Desai warned me that depression could return, but I never expected it to be so sudden or so soon. How long have I been home? Half an hour? What is it about this place that’s so toxic, and how will I ever survive here?

My room is dark and somber. It reminds me of the first time I entered Mamá’s room after her funeral — like someone recently died in it. Or should have died, I think.

It hurts Gabriel for me to see his illness get worse, but it also hurts me and scares me to see him this way. I wish that wasn’t true, but it is.