I don’t
think you understand. There’s only so much a person can do before they can’t.
Some go on, keep trying, refusing to recognize what everyone else already
has—that deep inside, they have already realized that they can’t, each denial
ringing more hollow than the last, until finally the refusals are nothing more
than an empty barricade as flimsy as the one Andrew Jackson used to stop the
British—nothing but cotton. Many stop altogether, digging in their heels and
plopping on the ground inelegantly. I’ve gone this far. No further. No further,
they plead, silent accusations and gut-wrenching despair swimming in their
empty eyes. You promised me my goal. Where is it? Where is my dream? But whom
they are talking to, whether to themselves or some other phantom conjured up by
their mind, no one knows. Others just kind of peter out, following the motions
but retreating deeper and deeper into themselves until they can run away no
more, because they have reached their last retreat. Among these, some push into
the wall, harder and harder until something gives, and the wall tumbles, and
with it the whole framework of their mind, burying them, burying them in an
amalgam of broken shards of sanity and creepy-crawlies of the insane. Or they
freeze there, petrified like a rabbit caught in the glare of headlights, and go
about their days, frozen, unable to feel anything but blinding fear until they
die, miserable. I don’t know which ones are unluckier. But if I could choose, I
think I would choose the first. Hiding has always been a talent of mine. Hide
deeper and deeper, burrow your way into twisted fantasies and shredded denial
until the reality of the world outside can no longer reach you. Because reality
always comes with pain, and you can’t have life without death, and who are we
to choose which one we want? So don’t judge them. They tried the best they
could, and who’s to say that comforting illusion isn’t better than harsh
reality? And isn’t that what we all choose, on some level or another? They just
took it to the final stage, that’s all. So don’t judge my mother. Don’t you
dare judge her. Even if you took up her burden, did all she did, endured all
she endured, you still would have no right to judge. We’re all different
people. We deal with this kind of stuff different ways. She was never very
strong to begin with, and she did the best she could. For love of us. That’s
all anybody can do. So just shut up, why don’t you? You know nothing about it. Nothing.
A/N: I don’t
even know where this came from. Obviously, it’s not Harry Potter, though I
think I could use it in one of my stories. I was reading Dicey’s Song by
Cynthia Voigt, and it just popped into my head.
