SandScript 2022

Nothing is real 4 .
Empty 5 .
4 Writing CD and DVD reviews was a good way of seeing and hearing the outside world without actually having to
participate in it. I had no strength to live in the world . I would submit lists of what CDs and DVDs I wanted to review, receive
them through the mail, then submit my reviews online, all without ever speaking to another person. Those reviews would
then vanish from my memory, almost as soon as I had finished writing them. (Indeed, to this day, whenever I read them, they
seem as if they were written by someone else.) The CDs and DVDs were my only window into what real human beings were
living through. The people in those discs were alive and experiencing life, love, pleasure, happiness, pain, renewal, and hope. I
felt none of those things. They were meant for other people. I could feel nothing else, but that void I felt in my bones.
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5 I knew, on some level, that I couldn’t stand to live like this. Yet I also thought I had no choice, because I had no emotional
strength to figure out how to break free. The only time my emotions would awaken would be when my father would erupt into one
of his abusive drinking jags and attack my mom or me verbally. Then after consoling my mom, it would take all of my strength just
to get back to my numbness. That was the most I could expect. I didn’t even want to die then. I felt like dying would take effort, and I
had no energy to spare at that time.
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