Life is but an emotional rollercoaster with its ups and down, where your feelings are the passengers being thrashed about. Violently each sudden turn shakes you to the core, leaving invisible bruises that never heal. You bite your lip to ease the pain, to distract you from the tears that are forming at the corner of your eyes. You keep yourself calm, you control your emotions, your breathing, your feelings as you hold back the tears that bottle neck in the farthest corner of your soul.


It is a never ending cycle as you fight hard to keep the sanity, as you struggle to maintain calm. You want to scream, you want to yell, you want to burst out like a mad person crying, but you cannot. Too many people depend on you, too many people look up to you, too many people wait for you to show weakness. So that they can move in to judge you, ridicule you, mock you, and hurt you, instead of trying to help you. That alas, is what society has become, a whirlwind of raging emotions, a prison of self reflection where you sit alone. Where you gaze upon the world as your inner cries land on deafened ears. The only sound heard, is that of your own heart beat beating roughly against your chest. Like a beating war drum, it rages on, it echos forth loudly with no end in sight. The sound becomes deafening, as your inner light softly fades, as the pain makes you question how much you can endure. So in turn, you cry yourself silently to sleep, using a pillow to muffle your whimpers.


You awaken the next morning to greet a new day. You step out of the house, walk past your friends, family and/or neighbors with a smile in your face and a stride in your step. They see a positive individual, a confident person, a happy being, because that is all you allow them to see. If they could truly see what you are going through. They would see you crawling on hands and knees, because every step you take is like hundreds of pounds bearing down on your shoulders. Each step digs your heels deeper into the muck of life, each movement submerges your hopes into a puddle of despair. That smile you wear is really a frown, that silence a scream yelling at the top of your lungs. Screaming help me, hold me, talk to me, look past this facade that I portray and see the real me. I do not want to be alone like this inside my heart. Yet, they will never see you for who you are, they will never notice the bottle of emotions within you vibrating with such intensity ready to shatter.

Let’s face it, people are too busy in their own lives to invest in yours, they have enough troubles to deal with. So you stay silent, you press on, you wear that smile, your play that roll as you have always. You do so because you do not want to trouble anyone, because you do not want to depend on anyone. Sadly, it is a never ending cycle, a revolving door or good days and bad, of happiness and sorrow. A moment where you pray for a change that seems to never come. You become haunted by a flood of memories playing over and over in the big screen of your head. It repeats the tragedies, the poor choices, the loss, pain, and the betrayal. It makes you question what you have done to suffer so. In that instance, you desperately wish it to end at any cost, but the end is nowhere in sight no matter how hard you look.


Yet you continue to fight, for this is your trial, your test to endure. It is one that you and only you can surpass, overcome and excel past, one that you must do alone. People will never see this part of you because you will never allow them to see you weak. They will never see you in the dark corner of your room, curled up in fetus position as you drown within the ocean of your own tears. They will never hear you gasping for air, and you fight the shivers, the shudders and the violent shaking your body goes through when your emotions release. They will never experience the whimpers, the cries and moans of someone in spiritual pain, because many will never understand.


You have grown accustomed to this cycle, to the wet stain on the hardwood floors from your tears. You know this spot oh too well, for it reminds you of that inner battle, of the war between heaven and hell that resides within you. It reminds you of how you overcame the demonic whispers that lies within us all that beckons us to quit, give in, and/or throw in the towel. It reminds us of the broken bottle that held our emotions which now lies shattered on the ground. A bottle that can possibly be repaired, but alas will never be the same afterwards, because it has shattered too many times. It reminds us that each day is another day, another battle, another moment that we must get past. It is not a choice, nor an option.

This is our life, our story, our moment, our existence to learn from. We must push on, regardless if we are beaten, bruised and scarred in the processed. For each success story is created upon a foundation of broken bricks, shattered bottles and fractured memories. It is what truly defines us, what makes us stronger and what prepares us for the battles of tomorrow. For you see, pain reminds us that we are alive, sorrow reminds us that things can get better and fear is nothing more than the fuel to overcome.


Remember always, that the lord never gives us more than we can handle, that each test prepares us for what is ahead. Understand that you were given this test, because he knew you could overcome it, not because he was punishing you. Wear that smile, play that role, bite that lip, hide those emotions. Do whatever it takes to make it through another day, and come to terms that we are never alone spiritually even though we may believe we are.

– George Mercado