In the shadows

"Breakfast was done. And so as a matter of hygiene, Jason went about on his usual ritual - making sure his hands were real clean before sitting down and have his meal. The breakfast was really simple, a cup of hot warm coffee with milk, pancakes with a sausage, a relatively healthy fare compared to what we have...or don't have (too many of us skip breakfast). And when Jason was finally done eating, he washed his dishes real clean with potent doses of antiseptic, and his hands were next.

Ironically, Jason's hands looked...a little less than desirable. His hands looked pale white in color, the skin seemed mildly eroded by chemicals; one could see fine red capillaries beneath the skin, pores on the back of his hands and forearm are barely visible.

His mother, Melissa, ever since Jason was barely a few years of age, insisted that he should be clean and that his hands are sterile before having his meal. She would hit him with a cane, so badly sometimes that his hands, his back would bleed. Those wounds and blood didn't seem to bother her at all. In fact, she would make him wear his shirt, so as to conceal the injuries from public eye. If he cried or stirred her nerves, back at home, she would hit him again. The bleeding could be so bad sometimes the shirt would stick to his back; his mother would rip off the shirt, forcefully opening the wounds, so that the pain would make Jason learn to be obedient. Because an obedient child, is a good child; a good child, with good discipline would be a great person - a great achiever, a good son, and a wonderful husband.

Not too surprisingly, however, Melissa's husband , Jack, left her years ago. No one knew why that would be possible. Their friends thought of him as such a wonderful husband, a banker, a loving father, dutiful, responsible. He was the man of every woman's dreams. Melissa, who was a nurse before her marriage to Jack, was attending, warm, and kind-hearted. A minor bacterial outbreak less than a year before she had Jason, took Jack's life. Melissa could never understand why or how Jack caught the infection which crippled his nervous system and eventually his life. She never could understand, and tried taking her own life soon after Jack finally passed on. Melissa blamed his husband's death on herself, that it was her brought it unto Jack..."

Dramatic as it sounded, a minority or perhaps even most of us, have suffered from the hauntings of our own minds. Jason, a victim of circumstance, suffered as a result and consequence of his mother's fate, her traumatic experience of losing her most loved one. Melissa, on her own account, pinned high hopes on Jason, unknowing that her way of "discipline" was causing extreme distress and doomed him to chronic and perhaps eternal trauma and nightmare, making him live with constant fear and delusion.

On both accounts, neither of them, I am sure, given a choice, wouldn't want to live a life like that. Not everyone has a painful condition like that, and those who do, tend not to exhibit their "eccentricities" as obviously as I had portrayed Jason and Melissa, retreating into the darkness of their lives, living in pain and anxiety, in fear that they may hurt themselves, the people around them, their loved ones.

I'm positive all of us are affected mentally to a certain degree, but for most of us, rarely to point of paralysis - some do. For those that do suffer from their own minds, to the point of helplessness, tend not to receive the love and help that they desperately need, whether or not they themselves realized it, unfortunately.

Considering my own circumstances and situation, I really have to convince myself, that as compared to Jason, and others who suffer and cry in the shadows, I am very blessed and fortunate, that I have, not one, but a few really close friends who are there for me when I collapse. I would like to, from here, thank them, and hope that more people would receive the love and respect they all deserve.

Ric