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Emaciated

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verb ema·ci·ate \i-ˈmā-shē-ˌāt\
ema·ci·at·edema·ci·at·ing
Definition of EMACIATE

intransitive verb
: to waste away physically
transitive verb
1
: to cause to lose flesh so as to become very thin <cattle emaciated by illness>
2
: to make feeble

What a word.  Emaciate.  Sad and sinister at the same time.  The definition above from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

This word found its way into my life well before I understood it, in the opening lines of an emotionally charged summer theater work.  It wasn’t my line, I just heard it.  It was my scene, I didn’t understand it.

It’s amazing, the power of words.  How words spoken or read can stay with you, reminding you of good, bad, happy, or sad times.  Words can stink or pull at heart-strings and words can guide or uplift, inspire and destroy.

Emaciated

It wasn’t until very recently that I saw this word come to life.  In a picture.  Tall skinny body, always on the thin side but that was once commanding and muscular now gaunt.  Hollow face set apart by protruding cheek bones, no longer rosy.  Deep set eyes that once sparkled with nerve and adventure from under a distinguished brow line, now encircled by darkness.  Ghostly.

Can you see this face?  I see it clear as day.  It haunts and hurts.

Is it possible to feel emaciated?  Cause I think I have before.  Maybe it’s other feeling that drive it and you fall away, into the shadows of yourself wasting away.  Becoming consumed with what went wrong and how you should have done thing differently to avoid this place.

You sink further.
And further still till you are riddled with memories and words and images that you can’t let go of.
Until you do.
Until you decide you won’t let yourself be eaten by the darkness that is this fear and anger.  You find a way.  Me?  I run.  I run long and hard and I don’t look back.
At least I didn’t.  Back to the power of words?  One text.  A few words.  One text from one name and that Pandoras box you locked and hid under a floor board under your bed opens and all those shadows come bursting forth with fury a thousand times stronger then before.  Angered for being overcome by the present and powerful thoughts and actions.
I fell.
I fell back into that dark place.  So easily.  Like returning to an addiction, it takes control so much faster the second time.  How easy it is to fall back.
Then you become feeble, handicapped, emaciated.  Because your feelings consume you.  You forget to take care of yourself.  You don’t sleep.  Can’t eat.  Can you get out of this shadowy abyss again?

A picture is worth a thousand words.  That’s a powerful picture if one little word can pack such a punch.

One powerful words perfectly wraps up one image and it scares me.
What has happened to that charming face and powerful being?
What will happen to me the next time those shadows re-emerge from the dark?

I told you it’d be thought provoking…

lovealways, Christiane