CONFESSIONAL a study in open wounds
I’ve got to kill my former self before it kills me. I’ll find a way to survive and be happier
I heard as a child that if I made an ugly face it would freeze that way, but no one told me that your insides do the same
I want to find what makes me happy. I want to stop trying to figure out what others want from me. I want to try less. I want to be learn how to live with myself. I want to be peaceful again. I want to be able to think about the future without a sense of dread or instant fear. I want to be able to step back from the edge without falling over it time and time again. I want to escape the cycle of self-hatred. I want to do absolute nothing until I feel empty and the voices in my head don’t make me want to give myself a concussion. I want to be unapologetically selfish.
I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT
I have been hurtling through something long and dark for so long that when the train stops I don’t have the present mind to get off. I stand clutching the safety rail with my knees shaking in the absence of movement, stepping aside from the open doors to let others pass while a voice in the back of my mind wonders how I forgot stillness.
I miss the softness of the smooth skin before callouses, before I started picking away at hard flesh that caved under my nails to rise up rougher and before the skin on my hands became skin that never touched you before my old skin turned to dust like so much of us collects under sofas and lines shelves and is swept up by a cloth, erased. When is the me that stands before you one you have not seen?
In your dreams you’re being chased. You never see the monster but it’s in the house. The lights are always off and the windows are always locked. You’re desperately going through drawers and closets because you know you need to get out but you also know you’ll never be back and how will you survive outside? You’re clawing off the mesh screen and climbing through the window with no shoes on and hurtling over the concrete wall and running through your neighbor’s garden. Sometimes you run straight out the front door and down the driveway into the night, trying to find a place to hide and escape where it won’t catch you. You turn street corners and jump fences and shout for the neighbors but no one ever comes. You never learn whether you make it.
You’re afraid one day your tongue will wilt like the flowers you mother leaves in a vase on the counter. You examine it carefully in the mirror, this way and that, looking for the first signs of decay. Sometimes when words fall from your mouth you are terrified they are the first browning petals shriveled, compressed. You gather them up in your hands to put away in a box for safekeeping, as if their faded scent and wrinkled edges will save you when the cathedral of your mouth becomes hollow and empty.
People are clapping. They are clapping and you’re wondering why you haven’t felt a single thing since you handed your ticket at the door and sat down. People are clapping. They are clapping and laughing and crying and you’re staring at the neon exit sign across the room wondering if the show ever changes and when it ends and if it’s worth it to get up and push through that door to whatever’s outside. You shift in your seat. Squint at the figures on stage. The person next to you jostles your elbow. You argue with yourself but never get up.
NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN NO PAIN
There’s a version of this story where they build me a new body and on days when I wish I could bruise, if only to see the lines of demarcation for where it hurts, I lie on a crooked skeleton and feel the bones align and crack into place. The wind wraps around my bent knees and there is no pain.
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