Imagine, if you will, a person has cancer and is dying on the inside. Also imagine someone who is a chain smoker for most of their life and on the inside their internal organs are barely functioning any more. And for good measure, maybe picture somebody who just contracted HIV and the internal chaos going on there.
On the outside, no one can tell what’s happening. I mean, barring hair and weight loss but I’ll touch on that aspect in a minute. And not only will this person, male or female, appear normal and the same but they could even make, through their eyes, improvements on their outward appearance. Upgrades. A new boyfriend. A new car. A vacation. Possibly even healthy, maintained weight loss. And they might even find this gives them a sense of happiness, as though they were blessed. But we know what’s going in on the inside and it’s what they are masking that is way more powerful than what they use to hide behind.
If you have a disease like cancer, whether terminal or not, there’s a regimen of meds, chemotherapy, abstaining from certain behaviours and a revolving door of doctors and specialists. Same with HIV. A lifetime of smoking causes great destruction of internal organs, often to the point of failure. There’s not much you can do to reverse the curse, as it were, though quitting might be a start.
All similies and metaphors aside, one cannot simply begin a new life and think they’ve beat the system. Money can buy you things, sure. That’s its purpose. But it can’t fix how broken you are on the inside. A different companion that currently loves and adores you, as many before him, doesn’t heal the wounds you received decades ago. It all still festers inside you. A nice week or two off of the daily grind and somewhere tropical is fantastic, but it won’t repair the total destruction inside your heart.
The illness doesn’t just vanish. If it’s there at all, even as a seed, and it’s been eating and growing and faced new batches of similar sickness, it all starts turning malignant. Then still left for years as people, homes and jobs come and go, all the while pulsating and growing like some living entity inside you. But you just mask it yet again. You change gears. Give your heart away once more. Always the same pattern.
If anyone could see inside you right this very moment, the first instinct would be to run for the hills, screaming and terrified at the atrocity that has taken over you. The deception and lies of trying to hide it is draining you yet you carry on, thinking maybe happiness is just ahead. Lying, crying and dying. The sickness is real.