I'm in a tunnel with only one way in and no way out. It's a horizontal hole, where the damp has soaked deep into the cinder block and my skin with it. There's only the light on the end that I'm walking further away from. I can still feel the warmth on my neck, even as the cold raises gooseflesh, tiny hairs standing like soldiers at attention. This tunnel is one way. There's no turning around. But that's not true. Every day I catch myself searching for something in the rearview, I look so hard and I look so long that I convince myself there really was sunshine to begin with. I look back at this artificial light I've convinced myself existed as it draws away farther with every mistake. Every mistake, every person that I give too much of myself away to, every friend that I trust a little too much. The grass is always greener, the sun is always brighter but there is no other side. There is only my past and my future. There is only the past that I try to run my way back to. But there is no going back, so with every step back, it's really a step deeper. Every step, the warmth shrivels away, it was always warmer one step before though even then I told myself it was warmer the step before, even then I told myself it was warmer the step before, even thenI told myself... I catch myself dreaming that the past was this perfect reality in which I was this person that I've manipulated myself into believing I wanted to be. I've convinced myself that I was beautiful, that I was strong, that I was happy. If I really could turn around, step backwards through my memories as if I was flipping through some scrapbook that showed instead of photographs with their plastered jubilance, as if I was skipping stepping stones over water that reflected the truth instead of the lies I've made real inside my head. I would see what I've worked so hard to cover up. There's a sort of loneliness that soaks in so deep you can feel it in the bend of your elbows, the back of your throat. There's a loneliness that sits like stones tethered to your eyelashes, weighing down your eyelids like rocks tied to your suicide attempts. It pervades through my existence like some shadow I can't lose, Peter Pan should be so lucky. Sometimes I am a train hurdling toward some inevitable conclusion, in which repercussion becomes percussion, in which commas become periods. Every time I give myself away to someone new I leave a piece of myself behind and expect the next person to put a little bit more of me back together. But I am not a puzzle. My pieces do not fit the way that I wish they did. My pieces are not simply left behind, they are obliterated. My pieces are destroyed beyond recognition so that my only point of action is not to reconstruct, not to rebuild, but to synthesize my brokenness. Turn the past into Disney Land, and the people that hurt me into Mickey Mouse. So welcome to my amusement park, my puzzle, my tunnel. You can leave, you will leave, any time you like but I'll still be here when you're gone, leaving nothing but a specter for me to twist into something you never were. The past is a tunnel with one way in and no way out. Where every step back is a step deeper.
kaledo-art
stormborns
ellievsbear
origamiaround
baratheonpilled
prguitarman
titsay
