Notebook Morning
2005-08-25 - 12:09 a.m.

He looked at the ceiling, water-stained and bowing, and tears began to roll down his face. He turned to her picture on the shelf, and then to the mirror on the wall. Upon seeing his reflection, he could only stare, mesmerized, his face distorted through the prism of saline. He reached for his Bible, and threw it as hard as he could at himself, but it only bounced ineffectively off the shiny surface of the mirror, landing with a self-righteous thump on the floor.

He rolled over on his stomach and reached for his notebok and pen, and, placing it before him, began to write. He wrote into the night, until his anger was all but gone, and all that remained of his hurt was a dull ache in his chest. The swoops and swirls of his letters painted his mind in vivid descriptors. "Wild", "racing", "on the edge", "spinning". He would later dismiss it as purest melodrama, being unable to replicate his feelings after they had passed, but for the moment, he meant every word.

He scrawled the last line, and placed his notebook quietly on the nightstand. The lights went out, and he slept until God turned them back on.

Hours later, as the sunlight punctured the black sky, its rays landed on the notebook, still open beside the bed.

"No matter what others do to me," it read in a disheveled scrawl, "they can never hurt me as much as I am hurting now. They can never cut me as deeply as I have been cut. They can never twist me as much as I have been twisted. They can only harm me from without, and time will heal those wounds."

Here, the writing seemed to bolden, each letter painted with a strong, meaningful stroke, as if to put to rest any concerns of insincerity. The words were simple.

"No one can hurt me as much as I hurt myself."

And then came the morning.