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Crazy

Lost among the tempting senses of a past she couldn't erase or escape from, Shara smiles to herself, wondering, where would I go anyway, if I could break away from them?

Memories thrive, more alive than the present tense. She doesn't know how to leave them. They follow here, shadowing each movement and shattering the glass enclosures she's placed around her feelings. Sometimes she cries. Other times, she lies, talking herself into believing that she's better, that the past can't touch her now. The memories have no power the way they once did, she tells herself, all the while moving back into them. She's almost resigned herself to the fact that they're always going to chase her down no matter how far she runs. How long has she been running anyway? A long time.

Time teases a person. She discovered that truth when she opened my heart to a man she loved more than she loved her own mind. She sacrificed her mind for him and yet, she is still here, forever enclosed by the caged thoughts he left with her. Thoughts that beckon to her the way a lone survivor of a shipwreck might if they saw the opportunity of rescue. Instinctively, as if their life depends on it, they send signals, reminding her, desperately screaming through any meager allowance of contentment she might have collected. They split apart pleasure with knives aimed straight for the heart. They know her so well that it isn't hard for them to find the perfect point to thrust their sharp blades. And she succumbs to them the way that she surrendered to him. The routine was set in motion a very long time ago.

She tried desperately to kill them all. The memories. One by one, she dissected them into a form she can accept and put away. Out of sight, out of mind, she told herself. The lie betrays itself at every opportunity. The lies we tell ourselves are the lies that will become our own heart's hole and whole. The lies are the illusions we keep because without them we would become insane. Maybe. Call her crazy for thinking this way. He would.

Insanity is one of those fears that can cling to someone who has been living in turmoil for a very long time. Unstable minds become unbalanced lives that resort to erratic, self-destructive behaviors. He told her she was crazy. He told her, every day, that she was crazy. There were times, too, when he was happy with her. She wasn't crazy during those times. He told her she wasn't so crazy then, when he was happy with her. She believed he was right. She must be crazy. She must be crazy because she couldn't find peace with a man who she loved and who she once believed must love her, too. Afterall, like he would tell her so often, "I wouldn't be with you if I didn't love you".

She could not open that bottle of tranquility that other people seemed to uncork so effortlessly. With him, her life was not her own. And with him, she was crazy.

Long after we had divorced someone told her, jokingly, that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. That was just what she had been doing for the twenty some odd years she had lived with him. Now, she only lives with the memories, thinking, maybe, she is crazy.

Learn more about this author, Regina Hill.
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