Broken

Bonds are so complicated.

Invisible, full of surprises.

Bonds hurt and heal a lot of things.

Heart, people, minds, views.

Worlds.

And this time, bonds hurt me beyond words.

Beyond time, beyond any possible vocabulary that could be used to express pain.

Bonds stole my courage and took away my sanity. A little at a time.

But sometimes, a lot at a time.

When the second one happens, I always find myself lying on the floor, asking God the same questions over and over again.

Why?

Why me?

I was always left unsatisfied though, because it was never answered.

A psychologist who volunteered to do a personality reading once asked me to draw a tree, and a face of a person. The tree that I drew was big, and I even drew a swing attached to that tree. But I used only one colour. My favourite colour. Black. The face that I drew was a woman’s, with long hair and her fringe covered one of her eyes. The psychologist looked at my drawings, and her expression turned solemn, as if I drew something repulsive. I don’t know much about psychology nor my hidden personality, but what struck me after that made the next customer in line stare at me.

“You’re broken,” the psychologist said.

“Is there something that you need to tell me? Something you want to share?” 

It weren’t the drawings that she found repulsive. It was me. She stared at me like I was a crazy person. Like I disgusted her, like I have just made the most sinful crime ever done by humans. Broken? What did she mean by ‘broken’? I couldn’t understand it, and although I wanted to know more, I hated the way she stared at me. So I answered her questions with a fake smile and shook my head politely. I left the booth, hurt.

I was broken, and I didn’t know what broke me.

Am I really crazy?

There again I lay down on the floor, asking God.

But no, I never get any answers.

I probably am.

What broke me exactly?

What was it that was so powerful and sly it broke me without me realizing? Reality bitch-slapped me immediately, reminding me just how fragile I am to be broken by something unknown. Something that is not even relevant or worthy to be mentioned in my memories.

On bad nights, I would watch a sad movie just to find an excuse to bawl my eyes out, venting all my frustration and anger in a direction which I think proper.

On nights worse than bad nights, the memories—painful ones--- would come to my brain and eat its cells so that my eyes would stay open and my body would tremble as my brain remembers every damn painful memory that I have.

The times when I get compared with my siblings.

The times when I was trusted with the wrong things, wrong secrets.

The times when I was misjudged.

The times when I lose a friend.

The times of betrayal in friendship.

The times of corruption in a family.

The times of failure. Small ones to the epic ones.

The tim----

The list could go on and by the time I was finished with the list, I sleep like a corpse. Cold, unmoving, a blank mind, and a frozen heart.

It took a while for me to solve the puzzle to the statement given by that psychologist. It took several more betrayals and pain, disappointment and wane until I understood just how broken was I.

I was broken beyond repair.

If I was a machine, I would be one of those broken cars in the junkyard, unused, wrecked and  lost its part and became the shelter of animals that would leave it once the rain stops.

It took around a year after that hideous personality test for me to discover what broke me. After multiple of hazards and misfortunes it reveals itself to my understanding. Upon understanding it I recognized that I had no power at all to drive it away. When I discovered it, I accepted my condition as it is. Even I knew that it has found my weakness and I, played with it, and destroyed me and everything I am.

It is the best silent murderer, the most skilful psychotic killer, the finest fraud.

Bonds.