Diana sighed as she tapped her pen on the her journal. She stared blankly at the page, trying to will some words to come to her. She sighed and set down her pen, looking around the room. People were playing board games or reading to themselves. To her, it felt like watching things in black and white. Life had worn them all out- herself included. She sighed, feeling groggy from the battalion of medications she was on. She hated it, but it was her life. She was damned to this slothful existence for an undetermined amount of time- possibly for the rest of her days. That was a hard reality to swallow.
She got up from her seat and took her journal, not bothering to grab the pen. She dropped the journal on her bed, then wandered listlessly to the window, staring out toward the grass. It reminded her of her son playing in the park when he was at age two. That was such a long time ago, but the wound still felt fresh. Now her baby was all grown up. The thought of him made her chest clinch up with sadness. She missed him so intensely that it stabbed her heart constantly. Only through his daily letters did she find some sort of relief as life seemingly passed her by.
There was so much pain inside of her. So much hurt. Most of it came from all that had been taken from her. Life had been a cruel mistress to her. And, looking back, she could see it so clearly. The rapid decline of her existence. It started with the loss of her job due to her paranoid schizophrenia. Then a pedophile targeted another boy before he set his eyes on her son, which led her neighbor to murdering him. After she told him about witnessing the event, her husband helped to burn her clothes and keep her from being implicated in the murder. But that led to the deterioration of her marriage and to William's leaving her and her son. After years of struggling as a single mother to her son, all of her hard work had been obliterated the moment her son committed her to the sanitarium. To add insult to injury, he moved across the country a short time later. Now all she had left of him were his letters and a very occasional visit.
She moved the curtain of the window as if she was brushing a lock of stray hair from her eyes. As she stared into her reflection in the glass, she saw a dichotomy of sorts. There was the sanitarium patient who was watched like a fish in a bowl, and then there was the rest of her. The parts of herself that weren't ravaged by her illness. Motherhood, being a wife, and a love of literature and learning. Those things made all the difference. She watched the curtain move slightly from the air flowing through the room. She liked that it wasn't still. She couldn't sit still either.
She glanced down at the wedding ring on her finger. She was still William's wife even though it's been well over twenty years since he left. In her spare time she often wondered why they had stayed that way- why divorce papers had never been brought to her door. She supposed that the simple answer was that they both were still in love with one another- they just didn't really know how to show it. It was in stark contrast to their college days, where "I love you" was said constantly, physical contact was always a must, and their passion for each other was evident at all times. Where had it all gone wrong? What was the exact moment that made her husband decide that she and their son were disposable? She herself had lost everything that mattered to her- her job, her mind, her husband, and her freedom, and yet here she stood. She was still alive and fighting. So why then did he go? Perhaps it was as simple as her own strength overpowering his. The idea gave her hope. She wondered briefly if he would ever come back, but honestly, she didn't know. She toyed with the ring on her finger and sat on her bed.
She looked up to a picture of her son that she had on the wall and smiled briefly. He was the light of her life, and she could not have been prouder of him. He saved the lives of strangers every day. She had raised him well. She glanced at the small stack of letters in the drawer of her desk. She had kept every single letter that he sent her. It was the only way she could reconcile him not visiting her. To be honest, she felt like he didn't need her anymore and that was the most terrifying thing she had ever faced. Her son was older now with a life of his own. These should have been her golden years- where she could do what she pleased with whomever she chose. But instead she had been left here to rot while life went on around her. More than any of that though, the feeling of being alone and increasingly isolated ran her life. Her husband abandoned her, as had her son in a way. Now she was left to face her future alone. But maybe that was better. Maybe it was meant to be like that for a reason. Even though the last few chapters of her life story had been dark and depressing, it didn't mean that the next couldn't have been filled with hope and light.
Finally, a thought that genuinely made her smile. She got up from the bed, took her journal, and went to the common room to write about her realizations about that day.