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I wanted very much to not be where I was. The only problem seemed to be that, where I was wasn’t anywhere at all. And for much too long my life has felt rather empty and unreal, and I somehow found myself embarrassed at its thinness in the same way one may be embarrassed for answering a question wrong in class or having a stained piece of clothing. It was almost as if I was in danger of vanishing at any second; only one blink could send me slowly to the earth to lay my head on a bed of moss. I felt like I could disappear at any moment, though at the same time, the feelings I had were so raw and overwhelming that I often found myself wishing there was a way of losing myself altogether. Which, there is, of course. But I’d like it to be only for a few days, months, a year perhaps, a year of just nothingness. Far too long has my life been hollow but I still cannot buy excitement like I used to. I cannot beg anyone to love me again, for I have refused it too many times before. There’s only one escape and I keep it tucked in my back pocket in the form of a sharpened pocket knife. I wish I could climb up one of those hills I see on my way to who knows where and wave my bloodied flag and conquer everything. I wish I could kiss a boy like a girl and kiss a girl like I could love her. I can’t even brush my teeth most of the time and when I do, I brush until my mouth bleeds. The future is a vase already been dropped and I knew this, even if I didn’t think I did. I’m pleading mercy in more ways than one and I still don’t have a straight answer so wake me up when I do. I can’t commit to anything, so I lay on the floor with a body that can’t love me and a paragraph that can’t save me. I’ll tongue the hole between my teeth and no, I haven’t found beauty yet. I haven’t even found a reason to open my curtains.
Depression is one long paragraph of words that don’t make sense. Depression is just one long extract taken from years of lying in bed.
You told me you loved me. You told me all these wonderful things and the boys touched my body and they made it feel beautiful. And I woke up dreaming three days afterward and it never felt real. So I touched my own neck to try and feel for a bruise but nothing was there so I put one there myself. And this is panic, but it feels good. And this is wrong but it still feels good. And this is hate but hate has always been nicer than love and so I learned to hold all the grey parts of my body to my chest while I lay between old photographs and a used tissue. I really don’t know what “I love you” means. You didn’t either. I think it means “don’t leave me here alone”. But we didn’t know that until it was too late.
Love is one short paragraph about nothing and everything all at once. Love is one single moment in which you were alive, but you didn’t know it until it wasn’t there anymore.
I have no stomach to eat anymore. Not when the world tastes like ash and old milk. Not when all I can do is occupy an empty space that never seemed to be mine. I cannot even sleep anymore, knowing that all my nightmares are dreams but played in reverse.
Self-destruction is but one fleeting thought we choose to ignore. Self-destruction is self-harm disguised as trying to be better, and trying to live without changing first.
I said everything last night to one of my walls. I had another dream about you, four dreams in a row with you in the green dress, you in the blue dress, you pink and black and blue all over. And I didn’t mean to do it but I did. So I said everything last night, but only very quietly. I said everything, but if no one heard, did I even say it at all?
Guilt is a couple sentences longing to be more. Guilt is an unanswered question, where the question was never even asked in the first place.
I sat on the roof wishing I had a cigarette bud to crush, wishing I had an obvious addiction like drugs or alcohol. I sat on the roof with my hands in between my thighs and looking nowhere in particular. And I could’ve sworn I saw God in the distance like a man with a violin he didn’t play anymore. And I could’ve sworn that heaven didn’t exist and I would never go there but its almost as if I could hear the violin from the other room. And that night I didn’t pray because I realised I’ve never been praying at all. I’ve just been begging with closed fists that when I wake up, so will you. But for some reason a dusty violin was all I needed to know you were alive, to know that maybe I wasn’t alive right now but at one point I was, so that means at another point I can be. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s how it works. And maybe after all, God is just a man who doesn’t see his kids anymore, because he screwed everything up and was too scared to do anything other than make sure his brothers didn’t do the same with theirs. And maybe his son will cry at his funeral, but he’ll never forgive him for all the things he could’ve done. Or maybe I should pray one more time just to make sure you’re breathing and finally get rid of the knives in the bathroom.
Religion is one unrelated thought after the other without structure or form. Religion is begging for something else, but eventually you realise that the person you’re praying to is no better than you are.
I don’t want to die. But could you kill me please? Could you stick a knife in my stomach where I feel all my guilt? Could you punch a hole in my throat where I feel my anxiety? Could you hollow out my knees where I feel my sadness? And could you drill a hole in my chest where I feel all this anger? I am a wasteful matter. Kill me. There isn’t anything left here. It died when I was a child.
Bodies are small and big, complicated and simple and no one knows why we have bodies. Bodies only seem to tell us they wish to live, or they wish to die - but it is never the bodies that make that decision.
At some point in life, I wanted to live in a neat little house with a small kitchen. In that kitchen I wanted to be able to see the garden from where I washed the dishes. I’d wanted a cat that could sit by the doorstep waiting for me to get home. I’d wanted a home with my name written in the walls and a song filling the empty rooms. I’d wanted a small shop nearby where the workers saw me and we’d talk but never learn each other’s names. I’d wanted all these things but it’s not real.
I want to rid myself of this feeling. It is as though I were missing something I never had, something I have never known. It is though this was just some irrelevant story in a pool of paragraphs long and short and my words drowned the pages so I stuck to silence.
And I never told you this, but most days it hurts. It all hurts. I can see it.
I wish to be more than the things I hated, so give me one good movie kiss and leave me in the rain. Have me smile and never see you after that brief moment. For we are only alive when we don’t realise and we are forever dead thinking about the times we were alive.
And in the end, life was one short summary of all the things we wished to remember, and all the things we wished to forget. And everything in between made us realise, we were what made it mean something.