TW: mentions of SH and death.
It may be a cliché, something many people have already said, but I feel lonelier when I’m surrounded by others. That inner buzzing that won’t go away, staring at an empty spot while conversations carry on around you, even though you’re not really listening, and no one notices. Your ears almost ring, and you close yourself inside a bubble where everything becomes muffled. That’s when it hurts the most: you realize you shouldn’t be there, that whether you were there or not wouldn’t have changed anything. And then you start wishing you could disappear.
Saying I want to die always feels exaggerated, and it’s frightening. The pain stops you: the hole you would leave in some people’s lives, the responsibility of whoever would have to find you like that. But disappearing would be simple: you never existed, no one remembers you, you don’t hurt anyone. And you stop suffering.
Why does being around other people make me feel this bad? There’s no need to answer: I already know. It’s because I notice the differences. I feel different, and no, not in the "cool" way. It hurts like hell to realize you’ll never reach their level, that there’s something irreparably broken inside you. You can mask it, but not for long. Sooner or later someone will notice and point a finger. And that terrifies you. Because if even they, so absorbed in their full, seemingly fulfilling lives, can see your difference, then everyone can see it. They can see...you. And even if sometimes your mind screams for attention of any kind, the truth is you don’t want to be seen. Spending your life in the background, like a side character, doesn’t sound so bad. Unfortunately, you’re forced to be the protagonist of your own miserable life, which, if it were a movie, would be the slowest, dullest, most monotonous film in the world.
It’s not always bad. Flickers of joy sometimes manage to rise above the sludge you drag behind you and that covers you, but they’re fleeting moments, brief, and sometimes you wish you wouldn’t feel them at all, because when they end everything feels worse. The sludge suffocates you, gets into your mouth and eyes, and you gasp as you fall again. And there’s no point trying to clean yourself off, because this substance always comes back, appearing out of nowhere, seeming to seep from your own skin. You can’t escape.
Being this tar monster doesn’t help: it feels like you drag anyone who touches you down into the sludge with you. When you leave the house, you can’t help but feel watched by a thousand eyes wondering what’s wrong with you. And despite that, after a while people turn their faces away, maybe disgusted by your very being.
Deep down you know you’ll never get anywhere: how could you? It’s too late to do anything. There are no resources, no time, and it always feels like you’re about to run out of whatever time you have left. Sometimes you give yourself deadlines, a label stuck to your arm like you’re a slightly bruised apple. You always hope everything will end by that day, that month, that year, but it doesn’t. You’ve passed several deadlines by now, and even though you’re a heap of mold and fruit flies, you keep trying, sticking that label on again for one last attempt.
I thought I would die at 18. I was convinced. I didn’t plan anything beyond that fateful date, I was so sure. Now I’m 25 and I don’t know what I’m still doing here. Around me, other people bloom like flowers while I feel myself withering more every day. I’m afraid the moment will come when I’ll be too rotten to remain among the other flowers, and someone will come along and pull me out because I ruin the landscape. Maybe that someone is me.
Sometimes the pain is so strong I can’t contain it. It’s inside me, it’s everywhere, and it pushes to get out. I think that’s why I cry so often. It’s not always enough. So I hurt myself, and with the blood the beast calms down. It’s fed. It’s satisfied. The marks left on my body afterward are a shame, something to hide, something malfunctional. And what do you do with things that no longer work? You throw them away. You replace them with something new, something better. I’m the rag doll with the loose stiches in her arm: maybe you loved me when you first got me, but now that you can afford a brand new Barbie, you’ve forgotten me at the bottom of the toy chest. You’ve started noticing my flaws: the hem of my little dress unraveling, one eye slightly off-center, hair too coarse to hug without hurting yourself. I am all of this: a mass of sludge, an apple, a flower, a doll, and at the same time I feel like nothing, less than nothing. Sometimes I wish I had never been born at all.
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