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[wordsrkive]

i’m standing on the terrace with my face oily and hair disheveled because i haven’t washed them in weeks. it is the peak of summer and the sun is glaring down at me, like a challenge, and i glare back because i want the sun to scorch me. i want it to burn my to ashes. you come out and yell at me and drag me back inside. somewhere between screaming at me in rage and worry you ask me if i want to die and i nod, though you don't see that – or maybe you don’t care to see that. i’m not sure what the difference is anymore. 

sometimes i catch you staring at me as if you don't understand me. you tell me that you don’t recognize the person sitting in front of you. and i don’t know how to tell you that sometimes i stare into the mirror with the same look. i don’t know how to tell you that one day i started imagining the ways i could die and i haven’t stopped since. i think somewhere along the way those thoughts turned into fantasies and it should be scary, but i find my self waiting for the day it finally happens. i don’t know how to tell you that i want to tear my eyes out. skin myself to the bone and crush the bones beneath my fingers to see how fragile they are. i want to pull my heart out of the chest and take a look at the tag it came with. i think i need to go back to the shop and replace it. i think they gave me a defected piece. i don’t think they’re supposed to break so easily. i imagine pulling at my nail scabs like a zipper, opening my body up from my left thumb to my right toenail and stepping out of my body. i don’t know what exactly will come out but i think ill finally be free, then. i’ve spent my whole life feeling trapped in a body that isn’t mine. maybe that’s why everywhere i go i feel out of place. i think there is rot within my very foundation. maybe that’s why i ruin everything that gets close to me. 

i don’t know how to tell you a lot of things. so i don’t. i don’t say anything and instead smile because that’s what you expect from me anyway. a smiling doll that sits pretty on your shelf. i please you when you ask me to and hug you when you need me to but you never think what i need so i don’t say anything. i smile and smile and smile and there are cracks forming around my cheeks, don’t you see? am i not hurting loud enough for you to even spare me a glance?

[wordsrkive]

The gradual process of disintegration goes something like this : You lie to every person that comes looking for you. You aren't quite sure what they want from you. You start failing things and forget that this isn't normal. This isn't how normal people behave. You think that they're just like me but the thing is that they're living by the rules. You learn how to pretend. There’s a million tests to study for and you're worried but really you aren't here anymore. You forget that it isn't normal to leave behind 50 marks on a 100 marks test and it's fine you have it under control but did you forget that you've slept through every single test for the last three years? There is a cling film around you and maybe it suffocated you a long ago. Maybe you're already dead. 

There was a thing inside you. But someone scooped it out and now you're an empty space dragged down by a body. 

I want to die so much. You have no idea. You have no idea how much I want to die and some day I will do it because I'm tired of having to pretend that I'm living. That I'm not a fish on the deck of some boat, flopping around in the mimicry of living.

[wordsrkive]

will you sit with me as i cry for a home i never belonged to? will you crave with me the comfort of having your heart held safely in a pair of warm hands? will you break with me every relationship i spent years building? will you watch with me the remains of a life falling away? will you help me bury the body of a woman who is now but a lifeless echo of a person? will you hold with me the broken pieces of a soul that loved everyone so fiercely it forgot to save any for itself? will you rot with me?

[wordsrkive]

Sometimes I wake up wishing I hadn’t. As soon as I become aware, I feel it.

Minutes pass as I blink blankly at the ceiling or out the window, not really looking, just there.

And it takes an unspoken thought of encouragement to get up, get ready, eat. Sometimes it feels like too much.

There’s no reason behind it, no roots to tear off and make everything alright again.

I can’t remember what that feels like, not being like this.

Whenever I’m free from work or there’s not really anything to do for my classes, the biggest achievement is getting out of bed.

Or eating breakfast.

Or both.

Sometimes I wake up feeling okay and then I sit down to work on something and I can’t.

I sit there, but my head is everywhere and nowhere…it feels heavy, fogged, blank.

I should really wash my bedsheets and dust off the furniture.

And read for my classes. I should probably do many things.

The job at the café gives me something to do somewhere I feel safe, makes the thoughts lower their volume somewhat.

Sometimes it doesn’t and the numbness overtakes, and I feel out of place, ready to go and bury myself in my blankets where the thoughts will continue, merciless.

How does one go about turning the brain off without the alternative?

The alternative…

It sounds promising, peaceful…like the end.

It’s wanting to die but being too scared to and then calling that fear ‘hope’.

Not wanting to do anything made me feel wrong.

I really thought everything would start making sense as the years went by but I feel worse, closer to a bottom I can’t seem to reach.

Not knowing what it is you dream of…

The alternative.

It’s being unable to picture a future for yourself.

Wondering why you’re alive.

Everything was supposed to be okay by now.

But I still look away from my reflection, I still struggle, I still want to rot away and not exist

[wordsrkive]

It’s falling on your face after telling yourself you got the hang of it.

There’s tears but no reasoning behind them, and you feel it. Right there, at the back of your head. It’s like a fog and try as you can, no matter how far, what direction you run at, there seems to be no end to it.

It’s been great for a few days; the feeling makes you want to look up and scream until your throat goes raw.

You feel the first brushes of nothing during a moment of quiet. Slowly, your body starts feeling heavy, burdened by something you can’t quite understand, and you look around and start asking all these questions that end up making you wonder why you’d want to live ‘till the next sunrise.

It’s a lazy sort of hyperawareness. Every sound irks you, the lighting is too bright, standing up is burdensome and laying down is the only thing that makes you stop feeling like the world is on your shoulders for a bit.

And then you plummet, and suddenly you’re two weeks behind on school work and everything is pointless again.

Your acting skills are…nonexistent and keeping it away from your face is hard but at least you can pretend. Tell yourself to get it together. You’re fine, there’s no reason to be like this.

You got out last time…it’ll stop.

It’ll stop.

[wordsrkive]

sometimes as i lay there, drowning in the pool of my own tears, i think what would happen if i leave the bathroom. if anything, i look worse than i came in. i act like nothing happened, but secretly i want- no i need my appearance to provoke questions. someone ask me if im okay, please.

im not okay. im not. im-

i get up. i wash my face. i wash my face a second time. i dry it off and pick at my skin in the mirror. afterwards i moisturize. i look for a lip balm in the bathroom drawer. i find one and use it. i try to smile once, i fail. i try to smile a second time and glue it to my face. i leave the bathroom and join everyone. my presence doesn't make a difference. i think my absence wouldn't either.

[wordsrkive]

i am not a graceful person. i am not a Sunday morning or a Friday night sunset. i am a Tuesday at 2am, a broken window during february, a baby bird with claws trapped within the protection of its own nest. i am filled with this awkward, unstoppable sadness. filled with these terrible parts that just keep colliding into one another, these bits of light and dark mixing under my skin like a storm.