Once more, I retreat to this desolate sanctuary—the only place where I am permitted to shatter. It is here that I explode, a silent detonation of the soul, only to begin the grueling task of gathering the shards. But with every reconstruction, the geometry is wrong. I return to a familiar silhouette, yet I am lighter in all the wrong ways; fragments of my essence are left behind in the debris, torn away by the sheer velocity of my own despair. I am a sculpture being carved away by its own creator, and I fear the original stone is almost gone.
I crave the "Life" they speak of—a blinding, iridescent vitality that makes the heart race with anticipation rather than dread. I long to stand at the precipice of the human experience and feel the exhilaration of the descent, believing, with a child’s conviction, that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
But the "manifesting" and the "wishful thinking" are merely ghost stories we tell the grieving. The reality is a brutal architecture of misery, a labyrinth of self-abandonment where the walls are built from frustration and the floor is a bottomless well of questioning: *Why continue the pulse when the rhythm is nothing but pain?*
They told me the world is a mirror, that I would receive the light I projected. I offered my most authentic self—a vessel of unalloyed compassion and optimism—only to find that my light merely served to guide a predator to my door. I gave the best of me to a masquerade, and in return, I was hollowed out by a master of shadows.
Now, I am an exile in my own skin. Sleep is no longer a reprieve; it is a stranger that refuses to recognize me. I avoid my own reflection, for the eyes that stare back are vacant windows into a house that has been looted. When I smile, it is a desperate forgery, a momentary mask worn to stave off the vertigo of my own disappearance.
I am exhausted beyond the capacity of rest. The definitions of "safety" and "love" have been erased from my vocabulary, replaced by a cold, humming static. I remain a biological fact, breathing and enduring, but the fire is out. I am a living monument to a life that has already left.
To the Covert Narcissist who betrayed every inch of me.
blakekathryn
prguitarman
gummygunk
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
snowghoul
gamechangershow