The Aftermath

Ok. Ok. I'm asking. What is the point? There, I did it. Happy now? Ofcourse I'm not. Just scared. And relieved. And f**king confused. It feels like the aftermath of a war, that eerie emptiness that makes all reasonable reasons null and void. It's something you can't reduce to logic and well intentioned arguments. Why? What makes the killing justifiable? The casualties part and parcel of a well balanced cost/benefit schema? Can there be any good found in the pain of thousands, or even tens of thousands? Any reasonable reason?

Madness. Mine. The war waged in my head - the highs, the lows, the psychosis, the self harm. Why? Sanity? The casualties - my hopes, dreams. My family, friends, education, aspirations. Is there any good in this? Does anything outweigh the pain? Of them? Of me?

These are questions I'm afraid to answer. In truth I'm afraid to even ask, knowing that I'm probably dodging the real issue in my attempts to explain how I feel. Why? What is the point? Now I've asked it will the demons go away?

Back to the point. My mind. How it feels. Empty. Lost. I can visualise the empty fields. The confusion. Shock. Like somehow something changed, something catastrophic. Something that defies belief - defies description. A feeling that things are now irreversibly changed, tainted. A sense of wrongness that you just can't categorize and explain. Amnesia, maybe. Or denial. A fog obscures the memory. Obscures everything. Nothing. Nothing but this unease. This emptiness.

Why?

Rachel Waddingham © 2002