My House of Pain: Prologue
Yes, there is a prologue
Names have power. They can cage you or free you, kill you slowly or resurrect what was broken. My first name was a fucking prison sentence, each syllable another brick between who I was supposed to be and who I actually was. Every time someone called me by that name, it felt like swallowing broken glass—cutting me from the inside with each forced smile, each nod, each silent scream locked behind clenched teeth. The name burned like acid in my ears, corroding any sense of self until nothing remained but the hollow shell everyone expected me to inhabit.
Sometimes, in dreams that feel more like memories, I see him—that terrified boy with scraped knees and a soul too heavy for his small frame. He's on the floor of that piss-yellow bathroom with the cracked tiles, knuckles white against clasped hands, lips moving in desperate prayer to a God who would never have answered. Tears cutting tracks through the dirt on his face, body trembling with the aftershocks.
There are prisons built of concrete and steel, and then there are the ones we construct ourselves—bone by bone, lie by lie, shot by shot poured into a glass at three in the morning when everyone else is asleep. The silent cells where we suffocate slowly, dying by degrees, telling ourselves this is just how life feels. Each brick mortared with fear that floods your veins like liquid nitrogen, freezing you in place while your amygdala screams bloody murder.
Your body's a chemical warzone—cortisol and adrenaline battling for dominance, leaving your mind a scorched, barren wasteland where rational thought goes to die. We become our own wardens, measuring out sentences in decades of denial so deep we forget there was ever anything else, our brains rewiring themselves into instruments of self-torture. The walls of these prisons smell of sweat, taste of bitter coffee and bile rising in your throat at each glimpse in the mirror. They echo with the phantom laughter of those who knew you before you knew yourself, the sound bouncing off the walls until it drowns out your own thoughts like a goddamn hurricane in your skull.
And all the while, anxiety gnaws at your insides like a rabid fucking rat, chewing through the tender tissue of your prefrontal cortex until decision-making becomes a twisted joke, your mind catastrophizing every shadow, every whisper, until you're nothing but a raw nerve ending exposed to salt air.
And in the end, you always lose. That's the cosmic punchline, the universe's cruel fucking joke. You build these elaborate cages, brick by bloody brick, only to find that the truth you're desperately trying to lock away is already inside with you. It's cellmates with your fear, sharing the same fucking bunk, watching you with unblinking eyes as you pace the perimeter you crafted. The guilt becomes both judge and executioner, holding court in the darkest corners of your mind, passing sentences that no human could bear. It carves pathways of self-loathing so deep in your brain that they become canyons you'll never climb out of.
You expend all that energy, sacrifice all that truth, inflict all that collateral damage, and for what? Your body betrays you—stomach churning acid that eats through your lining, sleep a distant memory as you stare wild-eyed at ceilings night after night, skin crawling with phantom sensations of everyone who's ever touched you and found you wanting. The truth isn't just finding its way to the surface—it's been breathing down your neck the whole damn time, whispering in your ear during those cold sweats at 4 AM. Its breath hot and rancid against your skin, reminding you that you never escaped it, not for one goddamn second. You withdraw, fold into yourself like origami made of bruised flesh, each crease a new boundary between you and anyone who might witness what you've become. By the time you realize this twisted irony, you've lost the chance to reveal it on your terms, to cushion its impact, to preserve what might have been saved if you'd just had the courage to surrender to what was real from the beginning. The stench of decay follows you everywhere, clinging to your clothes, your hair, your skin—the putrid reminder that the cell you built to contain your secrets became the vault that sealed your fate, with truth as your eternal, merciless warden.
And then there's that other hell—the one where your pain transforms into something monstrous, something that turns love into its grotesque opposite. The irony of it crushes your chest at night—how you think doing the wrong thing would somehow shield you from suffering, like building a fortress could keep out the inevitable tidal wave of agony. But that choice, that goddamn choice, birthed a guilt so profound it's become your conjoined twin, sharing your bloodstream, feeding off your heart. Now that rage—that impossible, suffocating fury—wraps around your grief like barbed wire around a throat, tightening with every memory until the person you once loved becomes nothing but toxic waste polluting your bloodstream.
You catch yourself in moments of sickening clarity, wishing they'd never existed at all, that they'd been erased from the timeline of your life so you wouldn't have to feel this fucking devastation. And in that wish—that cruel, desperate wish—you torture yourself more exquisitely than any medieval device could manage. Each night you flay yourself open with the knowledge of what you've become, what you've wished away, how you'd trade someone else's existence for your comfort. Your mind becomes an infinite hall of mirrors reflecting your shame from every angle, no matter where you turn. And you know, with bone-deep certainty, that you deserve every second of this torment, this self-inflicted punishment that will never, ever be enough to absolve what you've done.
This isn't just about Wendy—my true inner self emerging from decades of suffocation. It's about owning the wreckage I've left in my wake. The taste of someone else's tears on my lips when I couldn't meet their eyes. The sound of doors slamming or of the glass shattering against walls. The sickening crack of trust breaking under the weight of my crimes. The hollow echo of promises I knew I couldn't keep even as I spoke them. It's the burning sensation of shame that scorches your insides until you're nothing but charred remains, a husk of what might have been if honesty had come before self-preservation.
I've been a son, a fighter, a coward, a husband, a cheater, a friend, a monster. I've worn so many skins that sometimes I forget which one was real and which were costumes. Each mask a stepping stone across a river of pain too deep to wade through directly. Each performance another nail in the coffin of who I might have been if I'd had the courage to face the hurricane head-on. My hands are calloused from clawing at identities that never fit right, my throat raw from forcing out words that belonged to someone else.
This story begins with a child hiding and ends with a woman emerging. Everything between is the blood-soaked, tear-stained, joy-speckled map of how we get from here to there, from false to true, from half-life to whole. From yellow pants with elastic waistbands to sundresses that spin. It's not pretty. It's not clean. It's messy as birth, complicated as death, and just as fucking necessary.
I couldn't relate to all of it, because no one can, completely. But I recognized much of it. I won't tell you that it was well-written and evoked emotion (although it was, and it did), because you may not like to hear it.
By the way, per your insistence, I didn't read it--I DID listen to it, though.
Thank you, Wendy. If we're honest, I think we all must have things inside us that gnaw at us and make us regret. At least you're standing up to face them and that takes guts!