1,000 cuts can kill.

 

I can’t tell you what’s worse. Sitting in an office while a police officer tells you there’s been an accident, jump to the next day and you are helping to pick your mothers coffin.

Or sitting beside your wife, exhausted, after the two of you battled her cancer. Holding her hand as she slips away, unable to do anything but watch.

Maybe it’s the what ifs, what if my mother had been even 30 seconds later and that car wouldn’t have hit her. What if my wife hadn’t trusted the dr who starved and dehydrated her for 2 days before declaring her too far gone to help now.

Maybe it was driving her to the hospice knowing it was a one way trip.

Maybe it was that time I held my cat down as the vet injected him, damn he fought, but part of his face was gone, there was no saving him. Got him when I was around 3, killing him at 14 was hard.

Maybe it was a teacher as a child who stood me up in front of his class and screamed at me while 30 kids laughed, who finally broke me when he hit me in the head with my books.

Maybe it was a childhood lived in fear, walking on eggshells because I knew what that sadistic teacher was like.

Maybe it’s all the people who told me over and over how stupid I was until I believed them.

Maybe it was all of the above combined.

Be kind to the quiet, awkward guy in the corner. He’s been through more than you know, a lot more.

A single cut hurts but it won’t kill you, but 1,000 small cuts might.