Heart Like Ice

"Look into my eyes, child, that you may glimpse into my past." ~From The Fallen, a short story by Faith Morrison

I do not remember most of my freshman or sophmore years of high school. I am told that the mind supresses things that it is incapable of handling. The memories I do retain are all like a movie, seen once, and remembered. They are distant. It is almost as if I didn't live them, but I am cursed with remembering the pain they held.

In those two years, I learned the art of divorcing yourself from emotion. It is a way of hiding your true emotions, and funneling their "power" into other, less powerful activities of the mind. I perfected this art as I hid my depression and utter self hatred from my friends and family. I believed that if they didn't worry about me, I couldn't hurt them. It was a defense mechanism. I still do it to this day. It makes me seem as if I have little to no emotion, and many people like that in "crisis situations". Does it mean I feel the pain any less? Hell no. If anything, I internalize the pain, and feel it more acutely then most people.

The depths of pain those two year put me through are the kind of pain and emotional turmoil only matched by rape victims and other victims of domestic violence. A pyschologist once told my mother that the range of my empathy was "staggering", and that he was amazed that I got through my teenage years, especially with my past, without turning to alcohol, drugs, or sex. If I was that strong emotionally then, think how strong I am now. I've only had years to perfect it.

Music: Brad Paisley - Whiskey Lullaby
Mood: Cold Steel and Burning Ice