Architect of hate, creater of doom.

I disabled comments on this one. I want to say it and pretend that I didn’t.

This is getting fucking ridiculous. I woke up this morning on two hours of sleep, half delirious, then started brushing my teeth, literally preparing for my own funeral. Either I didn’t want to deal with my own terrible breath, or I didn’t want to die with grit in my mouth. It was so comical that I started laughing through crying. Is this really what it has come to? I’m going to carry on with the typical fucking shit right up to the last because it is so routine to me?

It would have been an ironic day to die. My uncle died this day, a long time ago, and it used to be my grandmother’s birthday. I only realized that through the toothpaste, as I checked the window to see if I could make a walk to the woods without being seen by my parents. I don’t know why I am saying all of this. It’s pointless to say anything, it really is.

I’m getting the distinct impression that this way of life is going to become routine in and of itself, if I do manage to last. I’m hoping that maybe by talking about today like it was the same fucking day as any other will somehow diminish the finality and stupidity of what I’m doing. If I do this everyday I will be nothing more than a coward who doesn’t complete things. Admitting to it feels like the worst possible weakness. I sound so childish here, but there is no one I can speak to about it. I don’t think I will ever be capable of sitting down and having this conversation with someone without more or less finding my inner self-destruction and ending myself out of penance for it a few hours later.

I went days eating almost nothing, less nothing than usual, driving myself insane with hunger while cooking all this greasy, sickening food during my shift everyday. Then yesterday I went into the refrigerator and must have eaten enough for three days, literally. I ate and ate until I was so sick I had to lay down because my mouth was pooling with saliva, willing me to get it all up, but I stubbornly refused, content to have the suffering.  My mother even asked me what I was doing. I said I didn’t feel well. 

“I’m dying. Can’t you see that I am dying?” 

That was what I wanted to say. But it seemed too melodramatic. If I heard myself say that I would laugh in my face and call myself an attention whore who needs to do some real dying as hastily as possible.

Yesterday I went through the whole ‘tell me your childhood fears’ thing with one of the women at work. I dragged so much out of her that I shocked myself. I forgot that people are so willing to speak in that kind of setting, so long as they feel comfortable. At the end she confessed to me that she recently lost a baby and that she was worried about one of the children at home because he had willfully killed a frog. You know, the whole animal killing in childhood leads to serial killer business. I thought it was funny, but I figured laughing would be a little out of place.

It’s times like that when I see fully the extent of how much I do not belong and how even trying to integrate into this on the superficial level that I am is like crafting my own doom. They will drag the last of me away, the creativity, whatever illusions of uniqueness I have convinced myself of. I will suffocate in this world I do not belong in, and as always, I know that there is no reason as to why.

This is what it is, this is how it must be.

That is all the apathy tells me, and sometimes it is about living, but mostly… Mostly it’s about dying.

Never far enough or good enough.

I don’t think there is a way to stop this, to kill the pain. At the end of the day I can only wonder if it is what gets me through. I’m no masochist, but I see the value in it, I see what it has to offer me and how it can take one misery and make it seem absolutely trivial in comparison.

I’ve been starving myself for days, surviving on virtually nothing then doing my 8 hour shifts at work where I run back and forth the whole time. I keep having these episodes where I binge every third or fourth day, then like penance I get violently ill afterward, where all I want to do is vomit, but I never allow myself. I’ve always had a weak stomach for food, and even when I was a child had to avoid certain things unless I wanted to spend hours with saliva pooling in my mouth while my head was bent over a garbage can, or lose the entire day to laying in bed with my guts twisting relentlessly. There was a six month period a few years ago where I was sick everyday. It was back when I was adjusting to my solitude, so I can only assume it was purely psychological.

Today, one of the assistant managers decided it would be fun to have us taste test the new menu items. I tried to back out of it, but could offer up no legitimate excuse. You can imagine what even a few bites of a greasy hamburger slathered in mayonaise and cheese with three slices of bacon would do to a digestive system that exists on either a tiny bowl of oatmeal drenched in sugar, or a few scoops of ice cream a day (and that too doesn’t exactly make for a happy body). She had us try it during work, so she told us to hurry up about it. I have trouble eating in front of people, in fact, I can think of many embarassing situations that would be for others so much worse, but for me much more preferable. The guy I was with starts scarfing it down as quickly as possible. I didn’t want it in the slightest. I took a bite and wanted to put it down, because immediately I could tell it was not going to go over well with my stomach. So this skinny teenager has his half demolished (by the way it was huge, about twice the size of any normal burger), and dashes out the door, and I’m running for the garbage can to do away with the rest of mine. Oh, but I ate enough of it apparently. I came home and ate a bunch of chocolatey garbage because I was in a bad mood, then about a half hour later I was salivating and doubled over. I hate it when I do this, yet I do it again and again, after telling myself I won’t. It sounds stupid, but it feels like failure. Even though I’m going through pain, it’s not enough, because it wasn’t that pure self-inflicted kind. I got my enjoyment for a few minutes, and that ruins everything.

Gloomy Monday?

Life is nothing but extremes lately. I fall from one end only to find myself at the other, with little explanation for how I got there. I wake up and I am somewhere else, someone else. It’s all blurring together until I can make no sense of it. 

Someone told me the day today. I blinked and said, “What?”, for how could it be that day? It was only a few days ago, wasn’t it? It was just Sunday not that long ago, I’m certain of it. But no, it’s been a week since then. We are back to Sunday. I don’t understand. It must be Wednesday or Thursday. They must be wrong. But Sundays, some people wear a tee shirt to work instead of the button-down uniform, since it is permitted that one day. It had to have been Sunday today. They couldn’t all be wrong, could they? 

I can only wonder as to where the other days went. I did not experience their passing, even if the hours felt as though they did nothing but pause and stretch longer than they were supposed to. I am all wrong, sitting back counting bullets.

And now I can only laugh as I realize the day has now officially turned to Monday. 

Now where did I lose that Sunday? I have to find it, because I think my head went with it.

Wash away your troubles….

Yesterday was a weird day. I’m still not sure what was going on with it. I was dreading all day that I had to go to work, yet I found myself pacing at the same time, willing it to happen sooner. When it came, I was relieved more than anything, so glad that I was going to be gone until late, until these thoughts had time to fully rot and lose meaning.

I ended up doing dishes. There must have been five people who walked by and made comments about it, thinking they were commiserating. I could not say to them, “This is keeping me sane. This fucking hot water and this sponge are keeping me alive today.” One of the guys was going on about the dishes more than the others, so I finally said to him in my monotone, “I like it”, which finally quieted him. He must have been bored, because he was hovering around the breakroom and then over by the dishes, not accomplishing anything. He came back later and asked me why. I could barely hear him over the spray of water.

“Because it is different. Because it is not the same process over and over.” There was more meaning to that than even I wanted to think about. But he took it at face value and finally went away.

I stayed over my time by nearly a half hour, even though I’m not supposed to unless it’s requested. I stood there stubbornly washing those dishes all alone until I was done, because I knew that the more time I would give myself at home, the more insane I would become. My manager was very busy; the night was full of orders and we were short a crew person, so he was over helping with assembly. He usually keeps an eye on me, more so than some of the others, but last night he must have forgotten, because he never came by to stop me. I was very grateful. I got home almost at midnight, somber and unable to sleep until dawn came to take that horrible night away.

The tables have turned again. There is no sadness to this desire, nothing but resolve. I got what I wanted; those feelings all waned and died out. And yet here I am again disatisfied and so out of place, only for different reasons. At least this way I don’t have any emotions about it. I washed the rest of them down that drain.

I’m not here to make you proud.

I’ve been waking up early every morning, much to my annoyance. The barest of light comes through the curtains and a roll over and groan. Not again. Not another one, another morning. I know that I do in fact need to get up. So instead of fighting for more sleep, I relent.

I end up outside in my pajamas, upon my mom’s recommendation. My dad is standing in the back with a can of spray paint fixing the rack for his truck before he puts it back on. After experimenting with the weight of it, we decide the safest choice is to use the framing of the garage to hoist it high enough, rather than having the both of us deal with back problems for the next week by lifting it with brute force. It’s heavy as hell.

It always times like that that he starts talking, when we’re working on something. I don’t know why. Every once in awhile he’ll say things to me, stuff that he won’t say to my mom. Occasionally he’ll mention something about the past, something about his brothers or some crazy incident from school. Today he starts talking about this kid from work who wasn’t paying his bills. This kid keeps turning up at my next door neighbor’s house, because of the girl who lives there. She’s a meth addict, from what I hear, and apparently he fell into that whole mess as well—hence the unpaid bills. My dad goes onto say how it is a complete waste, how all of these younger adults assume that other people are going to be there to take care of them. He says to me, “They just give up and don’t even try”.

The conversation got me kind of mad, but I didn’t say much. There’s not much to argue about, really. I’m not about to express sympathy for someone who throws themselves into drugs headfirst. I was around it, I didn’t participate, even though it probably would have gotten me some friends and their questionable respect. But I know what it’s like to give up, to want nothing but a temporary fix, because you come to the realization that there is no long term one, no surefire cure. I have, in  many senses, forsaken hope, a future. I go for what I can get, what I see as attainable. And how am I any different in what I do? I find things to slake the unquenchable thirst for anything, any kind of feeling that isn’t pain, and I let everything else fall to the wayside. I just have chosen different poisons, and am better at keeping them hidden.

It was a sad moment, but I didn’t feel it much, only acknowledged that it should have been. Blinding numbness is back in place again, my suit of armor. I’ve known that I will never be what I was expected, not even what I personally expected. Sometimes that is horrible to think about.  At the same time, I was never here to please anyone. I never signed up for this, and I will give this worthless thing what little I believe myself capable, until there is nothing left.

Is that not trying? Is that not in itself, an attempt?

It will have to do. It is all I have.

Life as we know it.

Most nights for the last three weeks, I drift into a medicated sleep only to wake to someone calling my name. I’ve always been an extremely light sleeper. A whisper or creak of the floorboards makes my eyes open immediately. I still can’t break my habit of sleeping with an obnoxiously loud fan running, even in the dead of winter.

This morning, no work. I went to open another bank account and so on and so forth, for this future everyone thinks I’m planning. The woman there was nice, quite helpful and personable. But I nearly laughed out loud when she praised me and made her comments about “what a nice girl” I was.

If only you knew. If only anyone knew. I put up my front and it’s swallowed all down, no questions asked. Wear some decent clothes, wash your hair, and ta-fucking-da, you are an esteemed member of society. They’ll still trample your ass, but they’ll smile politely when doing it. I guess that seems more acceptable to them, the friendly smile, a placating gesture.

Usually I can shop for shit and get my mind off of things, but today I had no luck. I was tired and uninterested, though I ended up buying something to see if I would have any reaction to spending my money. The dressing rooms I went to were awful, cramped, with a bunch of girls standing around critiquing eachother’s clothing choices. I got walked in on three different times when I was changing, and finally got fed up enough that I stood with my back against the door to keep them out.  

I came home and binged, after going most of the day without eating. I just ate and ate, only for the feeling. Some kind of satisfaction, even if it was a sad, primitive kind that was only momentary. Afterward I was just annoyed with myself.

To keep.

There’s so much about this I don’t understand. Every time I open a new doorway, a million more appear for me to explore. It’s a labyrinth, and I’m beginning to think it will stretch on forever, if there is such a thing. It’s a dark, long road to either doom or hope; I still don’t know yet. I’ll face that door when I come to it. God, all I can do is speak riddles today.

I feel so wrong, standing there in my blue uniform with my pressed pants and hair pulled back. That person isn’t me. People always ask me how old I am. Even when I say 19, they still ask if I have children. It makes me laugh every time. And finally, the other day, I snapped a little, and said rudely, “I’m 19, of course I don’t have children.” All of the women are around 24-26 mostly married, and nearly all of them have 6 year olds at home. I can only look at them with amazement. Why? How could you? You are barely even done being a child yourself!

Imagine, this one girl I see frequently, had her first kid when she was twenty. One year from now, me, having a kid. The thought sends me into an absolute panic. The responsibility…. I almost can’t care for myself (let’s not even get into that…), let alone some infant that would be completely dependent on me. It’s just two very opposite lives, two extreme ways of thinking. Me, with my solitary, self-centered existence, and them working at a fast food restaurant to keep their kids clothed. It’s so fucked. I can’t understand them, that mentality. I simply cannot ever see that mindset applying to me. Everything that these people are is all that I am not. 

Another one of the girls at work is trying to befriend me, even suggesting we carpool (oh, the horror). I feel like this monster. I look over at her and find myself aggravated. We discovered we both moved to the area three years ago (and we lived near one another before too, apparently, which she thought was the greatest thing). Turns out we live a street away from one another currently, in the same subdivision. In fact, I think I figured out which house is hers. She was going on and on about things, and I could only swallow and grind my teeth as she went on to tell me how she hated where she used to live, how it was a terrible area and so on and so forth. My home. My beautiful home, was all I could think. Don’t you dare speak against it.

She inadvertently turned me against her with that insignificant conversation. That, and one of the first things she said to me in the morning was that she likes working in the front so that she can watch all of the hot men (she said this as she craned her neck around all the cooking equipment and giggled, pointing out some poor, unsuspecting individual who was prowling around the booths in the corner). That’s just not something you say to a person that you have met all of once. I don’t want to know. I don’t care. Girl talk is not something I can relate to or understand. Quite frankly, I find it fucking stupid, but you know, we all have our dislikes….   

I shouldn’t talk so badly of it. The people are extremely friendly. They always try to help you out. You have a tray in your arms, someone is usually ahead of you to open the oven, or take it from you. Today, my schedule got thrown out for some reason before I got to it. One of the guys dug through a pile of garbage and got it out for me. It was covered in grease and all manner of nasty things. I didn’t even ask him to. Shit like that makes me take a step back, as ridiculous as it sounds. Even the smallest kindness is not something I am used to getting from others.

I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve struggled while taking my mother somewhere, trying to get her wheelchair to some impossible place, with people walking around me not even giving me a second glance. I don’t even expect people to open a door for me. My whole perspective of humanity is usually down in the negatives, but at work, it’s either everybody helps everybody or we all fall behind. It’s different when there’s a paycheck involved, at least in this particular workplace. I’m grateful for that, because I know I could easily have been shoved into a situation with a bunch of assholes who weren’t willing to help me learn the ropes. Everyone has made an effort to teach the newcomers. In all honesty, I don’t think I could have had it much better. I may not have anything in common with anyone, and I may not have any inclination to befriend them or any of that, but I’m more than willing to be cordial with them, which is more than I can say for the majority of people I come across.

On a side note, I got payed. My first ever paycheck. I couldn’t be disappointed by my reaction; I saw it coming the first day of work. Not even the slightest sense of accomplishment, nothing but stony, cold silence in my head, no flip of my stomach or surge of excitement. I looked down at a check and just sighed. I don’t know where this is leading, but I guess the best thing I can do is not stop to think about it so much. It’s only money. It’s only life.

Freefall.

I had an epiphany just now.  It’s 6:00 in the morning and I’m going to be late, but I need to write this down even if it winds up sounding insane and I delete it.

I’m in a dry well, way at the bottom, staring up. There’s a little patch of sky that I can see, all hazy and grey, but it’s there. I know that there’s a full sky beyond; I’ve been outside this hell hole before. But I don’t want to look. I don’t want to remember that there’s a world beyond, that there is something besides what I fell into. If I remember I’ll want out. And sometimes, in those moments where the veil is briefly lifted, I climb up the sides of the well until my hands are raw and bleeding, and I swear I can almost see something. But I never go all the way. I always look at the little stormy bit I’ve come to see as my faded light, and I let go and fall back to wherever I was before.

I don’t like the sky, as much as it is a symbol of its whole. I don’t want to be reminded, that’s the problem. If I don’t think about it, then I can go on believing that this is all there is, that I never even saw the full sky before. But believing that and believing in this wide fucking expanse up above, is virtually the same thing. Both are twisted realities. But the difference is, there is a sky it’s just a damn challenge to get to. My pit of fucking hell is all made up. I choose to see this reality, as I often remind myself. I chose my tiny chunk to see instead of the wide open world, because that sight still never pleased me. And now I want it back. I’m mad at myself for cutting it out of my existence. I’m angry that I took all the hope I ever had and burned it to ash.

And night. Night comes, and I know everything I am is coming to get me, all while I’m useless and trapped in the black pit. Someday something else is going to come down the well…. It’s crept around the top before; I’ve heard it, and crawled into a corner, waiting for inevitability. But it always went away. Someday it won’t. If I fight it in this little shithole, it’s all lost. It will win, because even the dark is afraid of it. And I’m just some idiot who fucking fell into a well.

No, that isn’t true. I never fell in. No, what I did was much worse. I was standing above that well once, looking down into the blackness. I thought to myself, “It could be so much worse.” I toyed with the idea, pacing around the edge of that passage to hell. Then one day, out of revenge on myself, out of a desire to end all that this is….

I said, “Fuck it, fuck it all”

And I jumped right in.

Don’t look back.

I don’t like turmoil. I think everything is still building as it was before, going toward this insane climax that I am trying to ignore. Things keep stopping and starting, and I miss the sense of sameness that I am so used to.

The other day, my mom decided to have another of her moods. She gets distraught over things very easily. I don’t quite remember what it was (yes, it was that important), but she was bitchy when I got up, and she was pretty rude when I said good morning to her. I happened to be in an alright mood (a rarity for mornings), so it kind of irritated me, but I just thought to myself, “whatever” and rumaged around the kitchen, pointedly ignoring her. I could hear her talking on the phone, sounding tired and monotone.

She always changes her voice when she’s upset about something. She loses inflection and kind of croaks things out as though her throat is sore or something, and it really pisses me off for some reason. Maybe because I feel like that all the time but I don’t have to make a fucking show of it to get some sympathy.

So I decide I’m going to go out since it is relatively sunny, and I shower and get dressed and all of that, then go back into the livingroom to tell her that I’m leaving for awhile. She’s sitting there in front of her computer playing solitaire. Her head is bowed down and she’s crying. I can tell from across the room, even.

I say it flatly: “What’s wrong.”

It’s not even a question, because I know she’ll elaborate. She’s like that. If I do something that bothers her she goes straight to my dad with it, like a child that doesn’t know how to handle a problem. And she always sits there and prattles on about things to me, things she knows I don’t give a shit about. I have told her on more than one occasion that I could easily go into a monologue about the digestive system if she wants to keep talking about the price differences on food from different stores. We’re nothing alike; our interests are like night and day. Finding things in common is quite difficult, which is probably why we often fall into constant arguing.

Of course, she jumps on the chance to have someone to talk to. I know she’s lonely, but fuck. It’s not like anyone is going to pay me the same courtesy. She goes onto explain the whole thing, and blah, blah, blah. I’m standing there with a helmet in my hand, impatiently waiting for her to finish. I don’t bother to tell her that I’m missing half of what she’s saying because I have my headphones on. She doesn’t notice. But I make it obvious that I’m not in the mood to commiserate.

All I say is “Yeah.” 

She wants to say more, I can tell, but my heart is like ice to her. I don’t know what I feel toward her anymore. I’m a physical guardian, it seems, nothing more. It does not go beyond that much of the time, and it scares me a little. I should feel bad, try to help, but all I can think of is all the times I suffer alone, constantly. The ache of misery never leaves me, even if I am number than numb. I am not a savior, and I refuse to be hers. She can mourn her loss all she wants, I will not stand by her and offer my shoulder. Those times are gone.

I look at her. I sigh, more out of annoyance at being delayed than anything else.

I walk away.

Mindless pursuit of nothing.

Life for me is vices. You choose a few and you stick with them. You hope against hope that they will be enough to convince you to see the sunrise of tomorrow. It has to be enough, it must be. There is nothing else between these walls to have. There is no bright future to imagine, because no matter where I am, alone or not, I will never be pleased. I can smile, I can laugh, but the second I think beyond that moment…it all dies.

I acknowledge that this place is my own. I gave up my chance to get away. I could have finished college and gotten a degree that I hated so that I could make enough money to move the fuck away. I can still do that now, if I arrange it all carefully, but what does it matter? What do I plan to do? I will have my own house on some deserted lot and live my misery on the fringe of everything, as I have always done. It will be no different. Alone, surrounded…it’s all the same. I can’t get away from myself. All I can do is pick at the threads and try to pull myself apart more quickly.  

I want so badly for it to mean something, all of this. Not purpose—I will not search for that—it doesn’t exist. All I want is to wake without regretting it. I want to know that even if I am doing the most mundane of things, it is alright. I want to believe that it is not nonsensical suffering, that there is something here for me that will make it less terrible. I wouldn’t expect good. Hell, I wouldn’t even expect decent. I know it would always be horrible, that the pain would always far outweigh anything pleasant. But I want some fucking ‘pleasant’. Where is it?

I’m beginning to suspect I’ve become numbed to it, any feelings of satisfaction or pleasure. I am the most jaded thing. I find something and I drain it until there is nothing left, until it can’t even bring a hint of relief. What is there after those things have been burned away? Do I find something new, pursue something else? Repeat this, over and over every time something grows tiresome?  

Everything has no taste. Bland and fucking dry. I feel like all I have been doing all these years is force-feeding myself justification—reasons to live—in this endless cycle of unstoppable gluttony. I’ve gotten lazy and complacent about it, not bothering to change things up, to explore beyond what is familiar and known to me. Now it’s too late. I can’t taste it anymore; it’s sand on my tongue and means nothing. It doesn’t make any difference now that I need it to survive. I’d still obstinately push the plate away even with that knowledge, because I simply do not wish to tolerate the tastelessness and grit any longer.

The feelings have not passed still. It’s been too long. They’re dogging my footsteps now, waiting, those demons fucking lurking around the corners to come extract their pound of flesh. Come and get it I say. Come take it if you dare. I don’t want it. I’ll take my apathy back over this any day. I’ll take nothing over sorrow. I’ll take numb. At least then I can distance myself from this, see it clearly without the taint of a bitter, unneeded heart.

Put me back in my coma.