Lighthouse

They called her eccentric. Said she was just “different.” A free spirit. A quirky woman with too many ideas and too few filters. No one saw the shadows behind her eyes but I did. I saw them crawl across her mind like fog rolling in off the sea.

When I was seven, I tried to write her symptoms in my diary. “She says the TV speaks to her,” I scribbled, thinking maybe if I could name it, I could fix it. At ten, I made flashcards to help her remember who she was on the bad days. I learned to hide the knives well Not always from her but from the world, who never believed she could be dangerous, even to herself.

She was unraveling and I kept trying to weave her back together with thread too thin for a child to hold. I screamed many times, I told them she needed help, real help. They laughed. Said I was being dramatic like her or how eccentric she was. No one recognized what she needed.

Now, she collapses in front of our bystander effective captivated audience, and then… suddenly it’s real. Suddenly, it’s urgent. And yet still they look to me, hollow-eyed and helpless, as if I’ve been holding back some miracle all this time. But there is no miracle. Only hands that are blistered from years of trying to hold together a woman the world refused to see as broken.

I want to scream again and again and again! Not because I’m angry but because I’m empty. Because I’ve spent my life throwing ropes to a drowning woman; only to realize I was in the water too. And she stares catatonically deeper into my eyes expecting hope because I was her lighthouse; long before I learned to swim. Her holding the rope to pull her to safety while the rope is wrapped around my neck; waiting for me to pull is to safety. I can barely float & I can’t swim…maybe I should let the tide take me in.