Catholic Singles

PUSH THEM AWAY
BY: MARK ANTHONY ROSOLOWSKI

Life stinks. There is no sense in getting close to people, to love them, to care for them, because as soon as you do they die. When they die you feel as though your heart is breaking as if it is dead. Grandparents, parents, friends, siblings and spouses die, leaving you alone, without. What else you are left with is sorrow, pain and an ache in your heart so deep and so great that you know it will never go away.

After awhile you try to hide the pain, the anguish and the sorrow by covering it up. You tell jokes, you laugh and you smile, but is just does not work. No matter how hard you try that pain keeps surfacing. As the pain comes up you push it back down and try to bury it deep. However, it keeps coming back to the surface just to cause you deeper and more profound pain. Pain shows its ugly head and laughs at you as you scream and cry in despair.

You attempt to make friends; you find it easy to do. Your laughter and good nature are contagious, people feel at ease around you. As time passes time passes, you remember the pain, the sorrow and the anguish you felt as each one of those you loved as friends, family members and spouses have died and left you.

You know your laughter and good nature are not a front; they are how you truly are. That is what you want to return to, the days before the anguish, pain and sorrow became too great to repress. The time before you would wake up at night crying and screaming out the names of people that are no longer there. The days before the pain you would have you sit at your computer and think of them and look for them as if they were there. The days before the sorrow made you turn the television down at night so you would not disturb those that are no longer there. The time before the loneliness made you spend most of your nights sleeping on the sofa so you did not feel the loneliness of an empty bed.

You no longer want to feel hurt and pain, you must keep people from coming close to you; you have to push them away. As you push them away even though you long for friendship and for people to share your life, you know that you will feel no pain if you have no one close to you. So as people get close to you, as you make friends, you push them away. You enter your cocoon where it is safe, secure and pain free. You cry at your loneliness, but at least you are not in pain.