Page 119 of Jaded

I make it home.

Fingers trembling as I unlock the door, I throw my bags on the floor, stumble into my bedroom.

It’s dark.

So gloriously, beautifully dark, like the insides of my mind, like all the realest pieces of me—emptiness that isn’t sadness, isn’t anything real or tangible enough to be sadness, to even hold onto or assess.

I am hollow.

There’s no reason for the darkness. No lurking trauma that catches me and drags me down. That makes me collapse bonelessly onto the bed. Still in all my clothes, I burrow beneath the blankets. Close my eyes, because how much easier is it, sometimes, to just close your eyes and imagine all the world is dark?

To just give up, let the darkness claim you.

I spend so much time, so much effort, being positive. Thinking positive, projecting positive, self-talking my broken brain into positivity.But sometimes I need to just let it all go. Give up. Give in and let the darkness claim me.

There won’t be any poetry writing tonight, no TV or texting or thinking about tomorrow. Dreaming, pondering, reliving my favorite moments of the game or the hours after.

Just silence. Darkness. Aloneness.

I let my mind drift away on a river of despair, hoping, praying to a God in which I no longer believe, that tomorrow the sun will be shining again.

But when I wake early the next morning, nothing has changed. The heaviness still burrows in my chest, the despair gripping my mind in a painful vise. I curl my legs into my knees, pull the blankets over my head to block out the sunlight shining in through my window, close my eyes and hope for sleep. I don’t want to wake up, don’t want to face a day without light.

But there’s practice soon, early, and I’m still trying to impress so many people . . .

So I sit up, glare at the early morning sun pouring in through my window, like how dare it express such cheeriness when my bones are so heavy they ache, my muscles too, from carrying those too-heavy bones around.

Still, I leave the soft confines of my bed. Splash water over my face, grab my toothbrush.

In no time at all, I’m out the door, in the truck, headed across town.

I can do this, I say, and even my inner voice sounds so tired. Unconvinced.

But I make it onto the ice.

Regret it.

I get lit up.

I can’t skate, can’t catch, can’t pass. My hands are like blocks of wood, my legs like Jell-O. My brain and body are irreversibly out of sync, my reactions so slow I’m practically going backwards.

Coach takes me aside while Dev runs the team through wind sprints.

“You look like shit,” he tells me bluntly.

I stare at the toes of my skates because I can’t bear to look at him. “I feel like shit.”

“You sick?”

“Yeah. I’ve had this headache since yesterday.”

I look up in time to catch the way his forehead creases in concern, and that just makes me feel worse for lying. But the lie is simpler than the truth. The truth has too many shades of grey.

“Why didn’t you say something at the beginning of practice?”

I shrug. “I thought I could skate through it.”

“I think you should go home and get some sleep. Take tomorrow off if you need to.”

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