better.

   "Feel better!" they say. When you aren't feeling well both physically or mentally. I hope you feel better. I hope you get better soon! As if that will make a difference. A Hope. We put weight on that hope. Time goes on, as if it heals all wounds magically along the way. And then they ask if you feel better- you say, "I do!" Because you do in fact feel better. You feel better than you did before but does that have to imply that you’re better? You got out of bed today. You smiled a few times. You even laughed. And what is better anyway? We hear better and we think that person is okay. Okay. Great even. They’re better, right? Then we move on. That is, until we see that news article. Get that phone call. See the Facebook memorial posts, concerns, love. Or find them breathless ourselves. And we wonder, but they said they were better. What could have happened. Were they lying? How could they lie to us? They weren't better? But wait! They said they were feeling better than they had been, even insisted. Maybe that's in fact true, maybe they weren't lying at all. They were feeling better than they had been before, repeated again. But did you fail to see where the starting point was? Were you in the depths of that initial point to know that coming however far was still falling short? Better doesn't mean the agony had stopped, that the day isn't internally consumed in dancing with the darkness, begging it for light. That the pain has sufficed and only the joy and magic remains. It doesn't promise that  they are no longer greeted with nightmares when they close their eyes. Better; in actuality pretty much tells you nothing. It does not tell you that the haunting has halted. That the shame has been wiped clean. It does not insinuate health or that a destination has been reached. "Better" is an assumption at best. And assumptions are the worst. 

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