Very intimate diaries  15

From the outside, I seem impervious to all negative creases that can reach me. Teflon. But in fact as soon as I get a negative slap, an alarm sounds in my mind and I rush to the speed of light, like a superhero, in this protective place that I have built in my head and I triple-lock the door.

But in the darkness of my mental prison I become gradually disoriented. Unbalanced.

This place where I came to escape the fear of suffering is the place where I sink all these fears in a huge sticky mud of aches tank. And pains that follow them. The drowning task is difficult and suffering. Very suffering.

I traded, in a pernicious barter, suffering for another.

I work for a few minutes. Or hours. Or days. My hands are covered with filthy mud as blood. I get exhausted and spread out on the floor. Curled up, I can’t speak, utter the slightest sound.

Yet like a rising tide of rotting carcasses, the tank disgorged mud that slides up to me. Slowly, the sludge covers my entire body. As this warm quilt my mother added in winter.

I become numb. I can’t breathe no more because of the mud I swallow on and on.

Then a small movement is born in me. It comes to life. It rebels.

Suddenly the way to get back appears to me more clearly. Like a crazed snake, I crawl out of this strangling vase and I take the way back.

I’m greeted by a dazzling light. Dazzling as it reflects off the iron bars that shine all around me. I realize that I’m in the same prison, but in a different cell.

Naked in my thoughts, I then take a long bath to erase all traces of this bloody mud.

Living for me remains a life sentence. I release myself with parole.