Cry Ugly

"Cry Ugly" My deepest private searing pain manifests as "Cry Ugly.” Guttural moans race like a runaway train. The wail crescendos and peaks as a Banshee scream. Tears race down my face… my nose leaks... snot and tears merge dripping off my chin reminding me of small intermittent waterfalls… I taste salt. Vain furious attempts to wipe this viscous interloper off my face and out of my eyes... are an abject failure... smearing and smudging it on my cuffs and sleeves. Insidiously, shame begins its invisible infiltration at the edges of my soul… like carbon monoxide… alarms sound… My body wracked with sobs crash into gut-wrenching convulsions… segueing into dry heaves... my worst bodily insult to endure. Dehydration sets in... it's hellish… my eyes are burning red... my tongue starts sticking to the roof of my mouth… I'm vaguely aware of a bone weary fatigue, like a translucent feline apparition peering around the corner… waiting to pounce… I'm helplessly trapped in "The Twilight Zone." Another crying jag begins... repeating the cycle... this time dehydrated… No articulate speech is possible… silently and falsely telling myself I could care less… but I secretly do care. My shame permeates, thus reinforcing a belief never to allow witnesses… A tiny voice of hope cries "this is wrong"... I can't make out the words, I feel its faintest vibration… yet unsure of its meaning… I feel it's important... Gut-wrenching sobs escalate into a silent scream…the Banshee seems to be silent… but it isn't. I'm the only one who hears and feels the scream tear at my throat.o I can't move... my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth… now I am desperately trying to pry it loose… my voice lost… I'm doomed waiting for hours and counting the endless seconds... utterly unaware when I subtly slipped into an exhausted lethargic stupor. Looking back at my self-imposed shame, recognizing its insidious march through my body… gathering recruits, comparing it to carbon monoxide, capturing life sustaining hemoglobin and leaving traces so this poison can insidiously and subliminally metastasize as if it's cancer. "Cry Ugly" is my private hell to travel alone… refusing to allow witnesses, telling myself lies that I'm protecting them from helpless observation… believing this is the only course available for me to get to its other side… This is a self-imposed solitary journey… shameful... in truth needs to be shared… so I can survive… Sherry Barton July 2021