I don’t know how you do it.

“I don’t know how you do it.”

“You’re so strong.”

“Most people couldn’t go through as much as you have.”

I’m not sure if it’s supposed to make me feel better or what. It’s like getting a gold star for having survived torture longer than “most people” could have, even though they haven’t been tortured in the first place.

And what’s the alternative? I mean, if you’re reading this, on this website, you know the alternative. But surely that’s not what these folks mean, right? So what else? They’d have a nervous breakdown and stop functioning?

I’ve done that. My body even started to shut down so I have to take medications every day just to keep my digestive system somewhat moving. My brain has shut down so I can’t feel joy or hope or contentment or excitement anymore; a lot of times, I don’t even feel the pain anymore. I just don’t feel anything, because that’s all my brain can handle, and it has to protect itself. I dissociate, I block out memories, sometimes months at a time – the mountains of bad and whatever specks of good go along with it, because these auto-defense mechanisms are too primitive and crude to discriminate between what’s okay to keep and what’s rubbish, what’s safe and what’s harmful.

I feel like I’m being forced across a desert, and every time I stumble, I’m whipped to keep moving. I’ve walked for so long, I can’t remember what it felt like before this desolate journey. I think I see oases sometimes, but they always turn out to be mirages. Now, I don’t even bother investigating what might be an oasis, because I can’t stand getting my hopes crushed one more time.

So I plod on. My feet are dragging, bare and burned. I am starved and dehydrated so I feel like I’m already dead as I trudge endlessly forward. My companions have all long abandoned me. I have lost nearly everything. My clothing hangs in shreds, the garish sun scorching my exposed flesh, thorns lash at me and dig mercilessly at raw wounds. There is one last oasis image. I want to believe it’s real, but would be shocked if it were. When I find out it’s just the last mirage, that will be it.

What’s the alternative? I could stop walking, I could just lie down and curl up under a shrub, seeking relief in its relatively cool shade. Rest a bit, slowly gather a minuscule amount of strength. The demon lashes me with the whip, so I stand up and go toward a fat cactus, try to get at its water to slake my soul-deep thirst, but only get torn to shreds in the process. And every time I pause, the sun beats on me that much hotter and I’m no closer to the end, if there is one.

This is what I’ve been doing. This is what people praise me for. What if I stopped completely? Laid down under that shaded shrub, dug into the sand where it’s cooler, stared at the sky through the canopy of the shrub’s branches, tried to hide from scorpions… mentally checked out, shut down, tried to shrink my consciousness as much as I could. Give up. Wait for it to be over. Rot, for the rest of my existence. The whip will lash harder, I will lose what little I have left, the sun will sear me, and new animals will come to peck at me and devour me.

I’ll never make it out alive. Even if this last image turns out to be an actual oasis, not another mirage… I am too changed, too broken. The desert is embedded in me now, I bring it with me and it taints any possible oasis. There is no redemption now. I am beyond that.

My life feels like one of those shock psychological horror films, you know, where the protagonist has to do something extreme like cut off their own leg or kill someone … or themselves … for it to end. We’re at the scene where they’ve finally come to grips with that and have started to prepare for it.

Recently, I told my cousin about 1% of what’s going on, and she said, “I don’t know how you do it.” This time, I actually said back, “What’s the alternative?” She replied, “It’s just a saying.”

. . .

Well then.