Down the Rabbit Hole

The Agony of Certainty

"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
Day 883 August 8th, 2016
Prompt: What do you think about this feeling of “I should have done better!” in any area? Can it be a positive or negative motivator in some way?


This prompt feels dangerous to me today because despite all my knowledge and effort, the doubts have been hovering just outside my thoughts lately, insidious and seeping. I see him, stumbling across the road, swaying on his feet, the effort to keep himself upright painfully obvious. I see him in my dreams, and all day long as I try to get my work done. I see him and I think, could I have saved him? Can I still? I ask myself the questions and doubt bites raw, bleeding ribbons into my guts.

I think back to the all the chances, to all the opportunities I watched him burn through. I think back to how so many tried to help him. There have been many kind people who have stepped up, who have extended their hearts over the years. I've seen the progress he's made under the right care, promises of a hopeless path digressed and a life renewed. I've been there when he's walked away, back into the darkness again. It is beyond tormenting.

"Should I have done better?" I don't know. I did the best I could the first time I lost someone to the black pit of addiction. I had given so much away, I nearly offered up my own life in the process of trying to save his. I knew it was not something I could bear ever again. No human on Earth should have to suffer through the pain and agony of addiction and loss more than once. It rips out your soul at the roots and breaks your heart in a way that it can never fully heal again. Its a endless wound and scar tissue burns hot with every reminder, with every memory thrust upon you. You never forget and when you see it again, that toxin demon in another, your entire system engages everything it can to protect you from getting sucked down again. For each moment that you search familiar eyes and see the light fading behind the irises, the certainty rises inside you like some terrible tide. And so I ask myself, "should I have done better?" And there is both a terrible doubt and an absolute certainty at the same time and the dichotomy is pure agony.



"Blogging Circle of Friends "
DAY 1363: August 8, 2016
Prompt: Each time the wind blew, she could hear the flowers talking to her. Tell me what the flowers said to her.

The brittle branches above her head bob heavily with the fat, fragrant blooms. She reaches up and traps one in her palm, burying her nose in the tiny purple flowers, breathing deep their perfume. Its a familiar scent that evokes memories of her childhood. She remembers cutting and arranging the lilacs into thick bouquets with her grandmother. She remembers bouncing on her toes under the blooms, tapping the rain from the blossoms with a thin branch and squealing with the water hit her bare shoulders and back. Each year the lilacs bushes would bloom at the edge of her grandmother's property, healthy and full, the higher boughs reaching into the skies three of four feet higher than her head. They had all but died out now, thinned to where they had to be cleared out. She had loved those flowers and when she had driven past the wide wall of lilacs, she hadn't been able to resist going back. She had wanted to touch them, breath in their sweetness. She wanted to reconnect with a part of her past that was simple, fragrant and full of promise.