By Michael Armijo
It was a strange day. I knew it when I woke at 3 a.m. I felt the pressure begin that early. And for the first time in my life the pressure was overwhelming. I stared into the mirror while the cold sweat dripped into the empty sink below. I gazed onward, veering at the tremendous bags under my eyes, and then I tried to rub the pain from my chest. The erratic beating of my heart confused and alarmed me, but I refused to let it be a warning.
As my day continued, the pressure seemed to build. The lectures, the threats, the bills, the worries, the irrational people with their idiotic responses. It just wouldn’t stop.
My emotions went from stress, to panic, to anger, to numbness. Suddenly, everything that was important to me became irrelevant. All that I knew that was important was now a distant thought. A forgotten feeling. It was a weird sensation that made me fearless, something that showed me a path I had never seen. A road that was once fearful of travel was now a road that seemed appealing. This was now a time that I felt that nothing mattered. Nothing, no one, no thing. It was simply a time when I felt that there were no consequences. There was nothing to stop me from acting out any bizarre emotion, any outburst of feeling. I was at the end of my rope. It was as if I were gazing into a black hole. Although nothing was there, you couldn’t see a thing, something unforeseen was attracting my spirit. Something was pulling at my soul. I just couldn’t stop staring into the darkness.
It brought back the memory of my son’s friend who took his life one dark day years ago. After he pulled the trigger in front of his peers, and as he lay motionless on the campus pavement, the biggest question was unanswerable: “Why didn’t he say anything?” Others said, “Had I only known, I would’ve helped.”
Remembering that story was when I realized I knew what happens on a lonely and impassionate day. It isn’t that when a person feels the bitter grueling emotion of desperation that no one is there to reach for them or that no one was listening. It’s at that point a distraught person will just never reach. It’s when a person gets to a point in their life that nothing matters. They just can’t reach out for anyone anymore. They’re done, and it’s just simply a time to move on.
The numbness the world has invoked on you makes you feel distant and hopeless. You can’t smile, you can’t cry. If you tried to scream, your mouth would open and nothing could come out. Your energy level is so low that the vocals from your throat just can’t conceive. You feel as though your entire life, as you know it, never mattered, never existed. You are now, subconsciously, preparing yourself for the next world.
It’s at that one instant when you feel that this life is no longer your own. You can only close your eyes and imagine how people feel when they decide to do something drastic, like pick up a heavy, handheld weapon, while feeling the cold circular steel press against their skull. They slowly close their tear-filled eyes while thinking of all those who loved them, and then they lightly squeeze.
Suddenly, all that you’ve accomplished within your life has been erased. The person you “are now” becomes the person “you were.” Everything that is “yours now” becomes everything you “left behind.” It goes from “he is” to “he was.” It’s at this time that you find out who really loved you, and you find out whose lives you’ve really impacted. People will cry uncontrollably, and others will be angry. Your loved ones will think about your actions, uncontrollably, for the rest of their own lives.
Unfortunately, you cannot erase what you’ve done. You can’t come back; you can’t erase the pain you’ve caused when you pulled that trigger. And the sad part is, for that one moment of desperation you experienced, so many lives were changed forever.
The next world? There are no guarantees that you won’t suffer for what you’ve done. So your passionate gamble could now be eternal. You could, quite possibly, pay eternally for what you did spontaneously and emotionally.
It’s at this time you realize that these consequences aren’t an option nor are they a question. They are simply a result of an emotion. These thoughts and these actions haunt those who can’t see the light. Those who can’t see the truth. They can’t see these things because their vision is clouded, their sight is constricted, because …. they’re constantly staring into the darkness…..
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