by Mila Jaroniec
I think about this sometimes: about how messed up we all really are on the inside. How we put on this “day face” and try to just live life and be okay, but underneath all that we have all these layers of neuroses and disappointments and unresolved issues that stay dormant until they’re triggered. Not overtly, most of the time — we wouldn’t be able to function if it were overt all the time — but under. Underneath us, inside of us. Things that happened to us that changed us. Heartbreak and trauma woven into the texture of our skins.
I think about this sometimes when I’m talking to someone, especially someone I know. It’s always more pronounced when it’s someone you know: you’re looking at them and they’re looking at you and you’re discussing something stupid like where to get dinner and all of a sudden it’s a surprise punch in the stomach, simultaneously seeing the person right in front of you and everything they’ve been through smudged around them like a sort of aura. You look at this person who was once on the verge of suicide, or overcame a serious illness, or had a dad who drank or no family at all, and they’re right there, talking, standing. They’re fine. They’re there. And you get this sudden impulse to weep or just touch them actually to make sure they’re real and wish you could borrow their strength for a moment because your own bones are crumbling.
It’s crazy to think about sometimes how all of us, even the most put together of us, are comprised of layers upon layers of experiences that once broke us, cracked our shells; about how we’re constantly mending ourselves, gluing ourselves together so we can remain in one piece and keep going forward for some reason. Underneath the outer layer we’re these coarse tangles of fears and mental blocks and sense memories and the older we get the more they just build and build. Sometimes we want nothing more than to be able to “let go” and leave the past in the past where it belongs, but these things imprint, in a way. They brand us. We can’t get rid of them and we wouldn’t be ourselves without them.