Thought Picnic: The voice of my hurt is my cry

My silence had a reason

The phone rang and it was a quarter to two in the morning as I stumbled out of slumber to answer the call, one I would willingly take and I am happy to answer.

However, this was a time most unusual, I have never been called at this time and it could only mean something I had not anticipated, so I listened up.

Three successive questions followed beginning with why, what, why, with me just getting a word in edgeways in greeting, the end of the last question was presented with the booming sound of my silence, I was not going to engage this issue, not tonight and not if I can help it.

I have cried rather than talk

Because in me is a well deep with waters sour and bitter from a lack of stirring and a shielding from airing much from which I have refused to draw buckets to douse those I have protected from taking a sip of the poison that has coursed my veins in the last four years.

I have revealed little and borne the most of the burdens and travails that my eyes have seen for where I might have spoken, instead I cried, for myself making the sobs speak words too difficult to offload that it might be too hard to hear and bear by those who I hold so dear.

So, I know not how you have fed or how you have felt, if only you knew when I could neither feel nor feed but that I kept from you because I felt it was necessary not to unload this onto you beyond what you daily face.

I did not demand what I might have expected

Yes, I am the first, but I am one of six, when I almost died you were none the wiser because I called to say I was full of life. Could you have wiped my brow in my darkest hour? Could there have been a greater determination amongst all of you that one of you might have come to see the man who had 5 weeks to live and yet had many days to live still?

You know not, you know nothing, nothing of my pain of my many losses of my love, of my dear friend, of my status, of my home, of all I owned and yet presented a voice of calm as it all crumbled around me because I cared that you might not be overburdened by the cares faraway as you are already with cares nearby.

I am not afraid for myself

I love you but there is only so much I can do and I can only do what I can do if the means exists to do, where it doesn’t there is not much you can expect but pray that things improve for all that you can be better cared for.

So, I have not called again, sometimes, I do not feel like calling again, for who you are supposed to be to me, when you cursed out of bitterness that day from the womb that I will stray and not return, it harmed both you and me, I have a memory too keen to forget and you have a forgetfulness too sure to remember – it all has consequence and we are living it together.

The days come and go as I have things that move me close to the grave just as age might do to you too, I refuse to suffer beyond what I am willing to allow, we have lived separate lives enough to know that the talk must be soft, easy, caring and considerate else the distance will grow and though the heart yearns my account is closing with the clear view of where I want to go.

I am not afraid to depart before you, there will be much comfort for it because the road I have walked has perilously sapped me of the longevity I once hoped will be my lot, but my story will hopefully end with a message of hope for others.