Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

“…You have been weighed and found wanting…”

The writing on the wall means a lot to me.
I’m not religious. I have very little idea of what significance it originally carried, although I think I have read the story.

For me, it’s a joke in a lot of ways.

People tell me I’m too thin (and I am, but not enough yet for real suspicion). Stage one, silly and shallow. Ha ha. Weighed and found wanting. Get it…?

I feel, much of the time and in many ways, that I’m never enough. However much I have, whatever all it is that I hold, no matter how loaded down with blessings or gifts or skills, it will never, ever be enough.
Weighed and found wanting. Ha. Stage two, a little less laughable.

Stage three is the worst, though. It’s got its roots deep in the Pit.
My mother goes mad every so often, after random amounts of time, some quantity of years.
Once our house had things like the writing scrawled hugely, black letters glaring.
They refused to be removed- we had to paint over them. But we all know they’re still there, adding to the secrets held together by these walls, listening, judging.
We have been weighed and found wanting….. ha…..

And then, on the ground, at the end of the joke, the punchline that sends me reeling, is… waiting.
Ominous.
Mene mene mene. It snakes through my head like a nightmare as a bearer of bad news; the writing on the wall.
After years of pain, I always know when something awful is trying to sneak up on me. Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin: Beware. Something unmanageable is coming.
Impending doom. It’s always meant something like impending doom; I remember that much.

We all fall down.

Thinking about it, really, it’s about as funny as it isn’t- but it all feels like a joke, until, of course, it isn’t.

It’s like a nursery rhyme:
The writing on the wall.
Whisper it dramatically.
“Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.”

Like a fairytale in and of itself.

……
I feel like I’m going a little mad, myself. Crumbling around the edges.
Walls collapsing.

I wonder if, when every brick and barrier is gone, the writing will still be there.
I wonder if I’ll ever not be wanting, found or not. If there will ever come a day where prophesies of disaster don’t come true.

This is the writing on the wall…