Fragments of Cassandra

I think the cruelest part of losing yourself
is that nobody tells you it is happening.

There is no alarm.

No grand collapse.

No singular moment
where you can point and say,

There; that was the day I disappeared.

It happens quietly.

The way evening slips into night
after the day has lived it’s course.

The way a photograph fades
while sitting untouched in a drawer.

The way a house settles so slowly
that the people living inside it
do not notice the foundation shifting
until the walls begin to crack.

I used to think depression
would feel dramatic.

I thought I would recognize it.

I thought there would be grief,
or panic,
or some undeniable ache
that would force me to look directly at it.

Instead,
it arrived like dust.

A thin layer at first.

Then another.
And another.

Until everything familiar
became difficult to recognize.

Including me.
Especially me.

Sometimes people make me laugh.

Or at least,
something that sounds like laughter
escapes my mouth.

The timing is right.
The volume is right.

It rises and falls
exactly the way laughter is supposed to.

Nobody questions it.
Why would they?

Even I don’t question it anymore.

Not until the sound has already left me.
Not until it hangs in the air
for a split second too long.
Not until I hear it
as though it belongs to someone else.

And every time,
I have the same thought.

Who was that?

Because it doesn’t feel like me.

It feels like an actress
who has spent so many years playing the role;
that she has forgotten her own name.

A stand-in.
A replacement.
A voice filling silence
where something real used to live.

The frightening part
is not that my laugh sounds fake.

The frightening part
is that I can no longer remember
what my real laugh sounded like.

I search for it sometimes.

The way people search old attics
for things they are afraid they’ve lost.

I look through memories.
Childhood.
Old friendships.

Moments that should have been bright enough
to leave a mark.

But when I reach for that sound,
there is nothing there.

Just static; just distance.

Just the unsettling realization
that I have forgotten
the voice of someone I used to be.

I wonder how many pieces of me
vanished alongside it.

How much of myself
was traded away in small, invisible transactions.

A little joy here.
A little wonder there.
A little softness.
A little hope.

Nothing significant enough to notice at the time.

Until one day
I woke up inside a life
that felt strangely unfamiliar,

wearing a face I recognized,
speaking with a voice I recognized,
laughing a laugh I recognized,
while feeling absolutely nothing.

And maybe that is what scares me most.

Not the sadness.
Not even the loneliness.

But the numbness.

The terrible, endless numbness.

The feeling of standing at my own funeral
while everyone insists I am still alive.

The feeling of looking into a mirror
and seeing someone wave back

without feeling certain
that she is me.

Sometimes I wonder
if the person I used to be
is still somewhere beneath all of this.

Buried.
Waiting.
Asleep.

Or maybe she left years ago,
and I simply never noticed.

Maybe she kept waiting for me
to come looking.

Maybe she kept calling my name.
Maybe she grew tired of being unheard.

I don’t know.

That is the hardest part.

I don’t know when I lost her;
or where she went;
or why

I don’t know whether she can still be found.

All I know
is that every once in a while,
a laugh escapes my mouth,
and for a brief, devastating moment
I hear a stranger
trying her best to sound like me.

And when the room falls silent,
I am left wondering

which one of us disappeared.


Be’ahava,
Cassandra