Member-only story
Wearing the Mask of Sanity
Life explained through the lens of madness.
The silence I live in since I found my child dead isn’t silent at all but is made up of voices from my childhood, talking incessantly and laughing as they clink their wine glasses together and scrape their forks across china plates. Noise I can’t explain is now accompanied by the shrill voice of tinnitus.
I stare blankly and wait for the moment to pass. It always has. I pray it always does, but let’s face it. The odds aren’t good.
My life is no different than countless others who hide behind a façade of normalcy.
We are what we’ve become, or maybe were destined to be or always were. I’ve lost sight of my reasoning on this. It doesn’t matter anymore. Too much has happened. I can’t contain it in a neat little box that I can present to the world with a bow and say, “See! This is who I am!” It’s not so cut and dry.
But I play the game with reasonable success, although I can’t say I have everyone fooled.
I don’t ever pass a metal, rusty swing without my mind immediately throwing me back to the familiar creaking of the up and down motion accompanied by haunted laughter from the children I birthed and buried before they were ever old enough to swing.
