Under

Another memory. I think it’s true, the whole ’stranger than fiction’ saying. 

When I was six or seven I used to bathe in the creek at my friend’s house. There were parts of it that were so deep I could stand in it with water to my waist. The water was calm in most places, and clean—melted snow runoff from the distant mountains. It grew into whitewater further down, but that far I wasn’t allowed to go. It was the first place I learned to spend time alone. I’d have a fight with someone back at the house, and I’d go there, out to that creek. The slippery rocks gave me my first scar. That’s how I know it was real.

One of her older sisters has a friend living with them. On the edge of the property are several campers and trucks, most of which don’t run. There’s a truck with a shell that they frequent. The sister steals cigarettes from her mother’s stash. Eventually her mom begins to lock her car. Money keeps disappearing. They are beginning to blame the friend, but I know better. She and the sister are fighting more and more often, but they still disappear for hours at a time.

Their room is filled with incense. It stinks too much for my sensitive nose, so I tend to avoid going in. It’s poster-covered room with a spiral drawn in black sharpy on the ceiling. I’m too young to know that the incense is to cover the smell of pot. I just look at all the Metallica posters every time I walk in. Sometimes I look up at that spiral, even though it makes my vision fill with dots.

The sister usually won’t let us in, but occasionally she does when she wants to have what she must consider a heart-to-heart. This consists of her asking us in several different ways if we think she is fat.  

I stay for days in a row sometimes. Some nights I see shadows across the lawn in the yellow moonlight. One night I hear sounds and walk through the dark to that door. There’s light beneath it. I hear voices. My friend is beside me, and after a bit of arguing, we finally open the door. I catch a glimpse of a teenage boy hurrying out the sliding glass door. The sister laughs and says, “shhh! Don’t tell mom!”

Some nights she sneaks him in. We don’t say anything. Apparently that makes us cool. We play Supermario until three in the morning. Some days we get up the next day and go to school. 

I’m sitting at the table, eating dinner. It’s hamburgers and hotdogs, a staple for the family. My friend is hardly eating. I tell her that I’m going to go get more, and she shakes her head. “I’m too fat. I have to go on a diet.” She’s six. By 14 she’s probably bulimic or anorexic, but I’m not friends with her then. I just see her, collar bones sticking out. I’m later told that eventually she looked like nothing but a skeleton. It happens.

It’s a few years later and I’m out on the trampoline at another friend’s house.  I’m probably 8 or 9. My friend from before is there too. They keep leaving me behind and whispering every time they see me, so I can’t really figure out why I was invited. They’re comparing weights and get angry when I’m the lowest. Suddenly they don’t want to talk to me.

It gets worse and worse. They come over to my house and won’t play with me. My mom gets angry and sends them home. At school they start spreading rumors and making fun of me. They tell everyone horrible, embarrassing things about me. People don’t want to talk to me anymore. They’ve made up lies about my mom, who often comes to the school to help the teachers. Everyone is saying things. 

One day I go back to her house. It’s after things have cooled down a little. My friend isn’t home, but her mother is. I say I’m going to go to the creek. She suggests I go swimming in the pool instead. So I do. She shows up, with that Mrs. Robinson smile of hers and stands in the water watching me, wearing some stupid bikini. She doesn’t swim, she only stands there, talking to me quietly like she does sometimes, like this fucking adder waiting to strike. And I’m 9 and don’t know how to handle her. And then she’s saying things about my mom and I’m getting angry, and I say I want out, so I leave. Leave the adder in her pond to wallow. I want her dead. It’s the first time I really want it, but I want to see her hang. I want to see her bleeding in pain, misery, dying. But she’s not dying. I’m sure she’ll live forever. The assholes always live forever.

I get new friends and it starts all over again.

Not this time. Not ever.

You would assume that work would be the worst of it. I really tried to get myself into a good mood this morning before going to town. I even took my time getting ready and all of that, and tried to ignore the fact that all of my clothes are tight. My mom drove us around to the park to look around for a minute, and somehow we ended up at this store I like. It’s expensive as fuck (think: $120 for a sweatshirt), but they always have interesting stuff that you can’t find anywhere else. I ended up with a jacket, naturally. That’s where the spending started. $64 (hell, I was so incredibly lucky, I think it was one of the cheapest things in the entire store). I wasn’t going to spend anything, but I decided to just let it slide. Later I gave my mother some money for lunch (I didn’t eat). Then when we go into the larger city a short ways from where we usually go, that’s kind of when everything goes down the toilet.

I was already feeling disgustingly fat and horrible, so apparently I decided the cure was to get my hair done. I’ve been saying I would, and my mom has been trying to get me to do it, and I want a change, and so on and so forth…. Well, it didn’t go quite to plan. I knew the woman at the salon wasn’t going to be able to get the black out in one go, but she had claimed that she might be able to get it at least to a darker blonde if we were lucky. We weren’t. It’s mostly a dark, dark brown, with a huge streak of deep auburn at the back, platinum blonde bits at my roots, then streaks of a lighter brown here and there. There’s even some black left.

Black is never easy to get out. I know that, so I didn’t go in expecting perfect or anything, and I figured we’d probably have to do it over a couple of weeks. But it cost me 150 dollars to get a head full of calico and a bunch of expensive as shit fucking shampoo to help my heavily bleached hair. In fact, the only thing that went well at all was the fact that my hair doesn’t feel like straw. It’s dry, but with some good conditioning I can get it back to what it was, and I won’t have to cut any of it off. I’m just annoyed, because she wanted me to come in again, and she was even saying that the best we might get out of this is brown. I hate brown on me; I’ve had brown. I like severe, I suppose, and it just doesn’t cut it for me. Anyway, it’d be at least $100 to get it done again, and I’m sure I probably would need yet another treatment after that, so figure $340 over all. To get the color I wanted (nearly white), I would have to grow my hair out, cut off the dyed stuff, and that’s just not going to happen.

I’ve had my hair like this before, stripping out the color myself. I had trouble getting it out this last time, so I went back to black. So I guess it’s good that she got some out, because I do have something to work with now if I plan on even bothering. I know I can get it out on my own, at least a good part of it, and I know enough about toners and dyes to get something relatively liveable. When I was 14 and my hair came out like this, it was cool. I thought the streaks of orange (yes, orange, bright and obnoxious orange) and all the crazy combinations of colors was interesting. But I’m 19 now, and the fact is people treat me like a child as it is, and this is not something I want to deal with right now. Everything else is shit as it is. I hate everything about my appearance, and to be honest, the only thing I’ve ever liked even slightly is my hair. Now I just feel awful. I realize that sounds incredibly stupid, but when you have no self esteem to begin with….   

It will take me at least a week to get my hair in good enough shape to try a round of bleach on my own. I don’t even know if I will. I may just go to the store and pick up another bottle of black dye so that I don’t have to hate on myself for the next few months while I try to fix it.

I came home in a terrible mood. I hadn’t eaten all day, but right after the hair incident, I picked up as much junkfood at the grocery as I could scarf down in front of my mother without feeling too conspicuous. I’m still eating, of course. I’ve always been good at making a bad situation worse. Everything culminated today, and I had to explode, I guess. I didn’t want to leave the house, and I should have followed my instincts and not left. Trying on five pairs of jeans this morning trying to find some that didn’t look obscenely tight was just not a good start to my day, nor was going clothes shopping when I literally feel like a whale.

Then, yesterday, ANOTHER coworker made a comment to me when I bought a sundae. Know what she said? “You keep eating like that, you’re going to get fat.” Oh gee, really? You think? How it’s anyone’s fucking business is beyond me, but every time I eat everyone seems to be extremely interested in saying something about it, whether it’s my parents watching me binge in the kitchen (walking in unnecessarily, pretending to be doing something), or someone at work telling me that if I don’t watch it I’m going to get fat. I already feel fat, so thanks. When my BMI was at 19.5 I felt sickeningly fat even though my ribs were starting to show, and now I feel fucking obese. So yeah, thanks. Keep reminding me, I’m sure I need to hear it all again! If it’s not one of the older women telling me to get my skinny ass out of the way, it’s one of the other women who seem throw it in my face that I’m going to get huge someday.

I’m fed up with everything. I don’t want to go to work tomorrow because I know that the same story is going to repeat with me doing too much all fucking day, then taking trips to the bathroom to carve my misery and frustration into myself. Then I’ll binge, I’m sure, after promising myself I wouldn’t. And I’m sure the next time I see my godmother, which will be on Tuesday, she’ll make some kind of comment about how I look a little chubbier than last time. Uh huh. She pays attention to my weight like a hawk. It’s fucking aggravating. I swear to god, someday I’ll make sure she comes over to our house and I’ll look like one of those starved, ugly runway models and she’ll have nothing to fucking say.

I really just hate my life, and it all stems from loathing myself. I can’t seem to be comfortable, no matter what. All I want is to see my own self destruction, to see this all come crashing down, for my secrets to all be revealed, and the world to laugh. I will feel justified then. I was laughable and stupid and even if I didn’t care what they thought, it at least means that my death wouldn’t be something tragic. It will be a joke. It always has been.

 The sadist in me would grin, and the last laugh would truly be mine.

It’s my own fault, really.

I was late for work yesterday, fortunately only by a few minutes. I didn’t want to go. I fought with myself over it. I wasted a good fifteen minutes trying to figure out what I should do. I was set for destruction right from the start of the morning, and found myself frantically scrubbing the dried blood off in the shower. I knew I was going to be late, and my mother kept coming in my room to see if I was ready. I was really short with her, trying not to yell. I was walking out the door, and realized I’d forgotten my watch. I ran back to go search for it, and there were my pills sitting on my dresser. I took three again, and felt the consequences for the rest of the day.

I was so tired and out of it, that I was going to leave early. Naturally no one was scheduled for anything, and I spent most of the day with one other worker making the food, assembling the food, and doing fried products at the most busy time of day. Don’t you love how that shit works out? I went to the freezer a couple of times and just leaned against the boxes. I found a box cutter over by the microwave and was flirting with the idea of taking it to the restroom with me on my next break. I still don’t know why I didn’t. I guess because I have a knife already. It’s familiar, it’s mine.  

I made it all the way through. Don’t know how I did, closing my eyes every few seconds as I was doing things. I ate a bunch of candy from the store again, even had an energy drink. Nothing helped. To top it off I was in a terrible mood and I was sick the entire time. I thought for certain I was going to vomit sooner or later.

I have to go to work again today. I don’t want to, but it has to be done.  I’ve made no real effort to eat better, but I seem to have stopped gaining excessively, which is nice. I’m still almost never hungry. I just eat because I am an idiot and clearly can’t cope with the most basic of things, like life. Yesterday, I was sitting in the breakroom eating a candy bar I didn’t want (I was hoping the sugar would wake me up), and this woman from the front counter walks by and says, “That’s really fattening,” then walks away. What the fuck? We’ve never been introduced, I don’t even know her. It just seems like a ridiculous thing to say to somebody. It’s a candy bar, no fucking shit it’s not good for you, and not to mention she must not know what ‘fattening’ is given her own body’s state. I was just feeling like crap, and that didn’t help. The women all say different things to me here and there about how thin I am and all of that, and I kind of want to say something horrible in response. Because I don’t feel that way. I feel absolutely vile right now, and won’t even go to the store without wearing a huge jacket to cover myself up with. I won’t even weigh myself. The only reason I know I’m not huge is because my uniform pants still fit. They have always been tighter at my waist, even when I was at my lowest weight, and now they still close, but they look like they’re a little small. On the days where they feel too tight, the next day I do my best to not scarf down everything, then they fit better again the day after.

I don’t want to be bothered with anything, it’s kind of getting sad. I know I need to go out and do things, regardless of how I feel. Tomorrow is my day off and I’m going to try to convince myself to go to town with my mother while she does the shopping. I know I can’t keep staying home like this, only sleeping and avoiding everyone. It’s not good for me to cater even more to my loner inclinations. Last time my godfather was here, I saw him twice, and I didn’t even feel up to going to dinner when they all went. I think the only reason I did was out of a sense of duty. I didn’t really enjoy myself, and found that I was having trouble eating in front of everyone. I’ve even been taking my meals alone in my room, not going to the kitchen table (I eat there by myself too, but it means my parents are in the adjacent living room) since I am so embarrassed by my own behavior lately. I want to stop, but I feel like I can’t. There’s just no reason to stop when I don’t care enough about it. Yes, I feel horrible and fat, but no one sees me anyway, and I don’t have to leave my house if I don’t feel like it. This is how I keep rationalizing things, even though I know that my eating, my lack of exercise lately, and several other factors all have a lot to do with my feeling like shit over all.

I’m just lazy and don’t want to do anything that takes effort. I do my nine hours at work, then I come home and sleep. Apparently, that is my life.

Exploder

I like this side of myself, I must say. It is such a beautiful thing to release my hold on everything that was once the foundation that kept me grounded. I don’t have to be careful any longer, I don’t have to concern myself with what others will think. It doesn’t matter. I can punish myself as much as I wish, and again, there will be no consequence. No one will stop me, and that does not sadden me like it once did.

 They don’t understand and that is fine. No one needs to understand or try to rationalize my behavior if they don’t wish to. Call it irrational. Call me depressed and childish and impetuous and wasteful and useless and I won’t so much as flinch. I’ve known these things. I don’t protest them. I haven’t made any attempt to change.

 Watch me self-destruct and do nothing. Don’t ask my why I lock my door, or why I sleep so much, or why I eat to the point that I often find myself bent over a garbage can because I am so ill. Don’t ask me why my showers are so long, or why there are bruises all over me. Don’t ask me why I never turn the lights on, or why I haven’t asked to go to town. Don’t ask me anything at all, because it does not matter. I will fade, you will watch, and it will all be fine. It will be fine because we all know this is how it is meant to be, because we all know this is so much worse than I would ever confess to. We all know that I was fucked from the start and it was just a matter of time.

 Life is beautiful and I don’t care. It could be the greatest, most rewarding experience, and I’m sure that this head of mine would find some way to twist it into something it isn’t. Everything will be dark because I said it was and then it was so. That is the one thing about higher thought that they like to throw in your face whenever possible: remember, it’s not that the world is fucked up, it’s that you have distorted perceptions! Nothing could ever be wrong with something everyone believes in! It’s all YOU!

 Of course it is all me. Who else would it be? I am the source of everything that is wrong with me.

 I was supposed to up my dosage today to one full pill. It’s all in the baby steps now, see. We gotta be careful with your fragile state of mind and everything. Wouldn’t want to overload you. But seeing as how I was already taking a full pill….

You know, I thought taking three happy pills and having this house all to myself with the lights all turned off would turn me into a vegetable. How wrong I was! All I want to do is destroy something. It’s the perfect day to go out and integrate, is it not, with me feeling so fucking chipper?

It’s funny, because as pissed off as I am at everything for no apparent fucking reason, and as much as I hate myself for being such an idiot and agreeing to such bullshit in the first place, I’m feeling more apathetic than ever.

Great how that works out. In truth I am never alone; apathy will always be my shadow.

I don’t have to be anyone.

The food didn’t taste like anything this morning. I didn’t want it. I finally gave up at trying to make it sweet and settled for bland. I ate as much as I could convince myself. I want to be Raymond. I want Tyler to put a gun to my head and see if the next morning I have the best breakfast I have ever tasted. I want to see if I wake up that morning and don’t feel sorry. I want to see if something comes to me in the morning haze, a feeling maybe. I want to wake up and experience something besides dread and a wretched disappointment with myself. 

People are in love with an idea of themselves. Maybe in a sick way, I am too. That vision is supposed to propel us through life, make us desire improvement and recognition for our efforts. We all want to appear better than we are, and as a consequence this gives us motivation to live, to have the satisfaction of not only pleasing ourselves, but receiving praise from others for being so fucking incredible. A vicious little cycle.

But if you don’t care? If that vision is all about being the cruelest person? You must find enough satisfaction in what you selfishly get out of it. I’m not suggesting that it isn’t always selfish, in fact, come to think of it, conventionally this is less so than most visions. In truth, you have to settle for less than everyone else. You have to be alright with the fact that no one is going to understand it or appreciate it as you do.  You have to go it all alone and hope that the monsters that lurk aren’t going to feed off of you in the dark. Your suffering means nothing to anyone, and they will laugh at you and attack you until you are beaten down and weakened. No one will tend to your wounds. No one will regret that they tore that wretched thing down. Ugly things shouldn’t be suffered to live, after all.

And I am not ready. I leapt off the tower of humanity out of fear instead of faith, and there was nothing below to break my fall. I crashed all the way down, condemned to be a mangled heap of something that once was. In my eyes you either accept yourself (even if it is reluctant) or you spend a lifetime doing the job of killing yourself rather than allowing the world to do it for you.

Maybe the true escape is being nothing and having no qualms about it, not being burdened by what you’ve been taught or by whatever inadequacies you see yourself as being afflicted with. Maybe we are being stupid by trying for something that we all know is as pointless as anything else.

All we do is struggle constantly against who we are because we are so enamored with what we could be.

I’ll dig the hole and bow my head.

I feel like a wrecking ball: I’m going straight toward inevitable destruction. It seems I know nothing else, and would accept nothing else. If I was normal what would I be? Would I be vaguely satisfied?

I live and breathe discontent. I’m beginning to wonder at the depth of this masochism. Just how far does it run? What lengths do I go to in order to make it/keep it this way? I have never believed I was free of blame regarding this. I wholly take credit for the state of my being, of my life. But I must wonder now if it is not the constant struggle that compels me to stay when all reason tells me what a mistake it is. Something is restraining me. Just barely, but there it is. Like a chain I can’t be rid of. I can rub my neck raw, choke myself with it, but it will not come loose and I do not have the courage to test the absolute limits of my flesh.

 Ah, cowardice. There it is again, my one companion. I can’t go the extra mile; I am trapped, bound by my own limitations. I am fearful of being free, of letting go. Sentimentality, what a bitch.

Part of me must take pleasure in this misery; I can find no other explanation.  It has to end, sooner or later. The pain will bite through, will overcome whatever I am getting out of this waste of existence until I am left as the shell I always knew I was.

If only I wasn’t so numb. If only I could bring myself to care.

I feel so wretchedly obedient. I feel like a slave to it all, when I know for a fact that I have had the key to this lock since the day I was born.

Oh don’t worry, it’s not your life!

This week has been terrible. I’ve been holding the anger in, making a pretty good attempt. But fuck it. It’s not like saying it aloud here, in the abyss of ‘anonymous’ internet is hurting anyone. The people who should be reading it—my parents—are about as likely to stumble on this as the spear of fucking destiny. But well, with my luck…let’s not even get into it.

I woke up on my day off (this was a couple of days ago) to find my parents trading car information back and forth. My mother is on her computer, my father on his. Apparently if I am registered with an older vehicle it cuts down our insurance payment by about a hundred dollars a month. So there they are, looking for a car. They didn’t even ask me. They’re talking about forking out some of whatever they’ve been saving, and I know that in the end I would have to produce something as well. Which is fine. I don’t care about the money. What I care about is when people make decisions for me, when I am legally considered an adult. Usually I am nonchalant about that kind of thing, so maybe that is why they thought it would be alright to start searching without telling me about it. But I don’t know…it made me furious. I may not have much of a life, or put forward much effort, but I think I still deserve to make a few choices in it. 

They had even called someone who was selling one of the cars. Without me.

Maybe I’m taking this too seriously. Maybe I’m being a stupid cunt about it, and I should get over it since they are being nice enough to even consider paying for part of it. But fuck, is it so much to ask that I be included from the beginning? I’ve talked a lot about getting an old car, for the purpose of having something that I wouldn’t have to worry about wrecking. But I’ve been working all of a month, so obviously, that is not at the top of my priorities right now, and probably never would be, because for one I don’t like to drive anyway. I was never all that serious about going through with it. At any time.

Then the other day, I was quading over in this area I wasn’t familiar with. I was about fifteen miles from my house, not a good place to get stuck in. The stupid thing was roaring and bogging down. It’s been doing this, even though the throttle was adjusted and it should be just fine. It has always had problems, so for the most part I ignore it when it acts up. Eventually, about halfway up the fucking mountain, I turned around and went back, because I could tell it was going to die. I did get it home, but only by gunning it the entire way to keep it from hesitating to the point of stalling.

Then I had left some money on the washing machine for gas—dad went and bought premium fuel with it. I can barely afford regular fuel, so now, instead of filling the gas canister in the garage all the way, it was only half full. All I do is use my ATV, really. There isn’t much else I do, so it kind of pissed me off. Yeah, I get that he wants them to run better, cleaner, but if it had been hismoney he would never have bought that fuel. He would have bought regular like he always does, otherwise I wouldn’t have had an issue with it. I’m trying to be lenient and show some trust and it just keeps blowing up in my face. I honestly couldn’t care less about the money, that’s what is so ridiculous. I’m not planning any future or doing anything with it. What angers me is that other people seem to think it is okay to do things without my permission. I’d like to have a fucking say in how my own life is run, thanks.

I guess it doesn’t matter. I’ve never shown an interest in deciding anything anyway, have I? So people assume I will continue to be the same way.

Those things are just a few in the long list of things that have gone wrong this week. I hope it lets up soon; I don’t have much tolerance to keep handling it all silently.

Sometimes giving up sounds so much better.

I feel like I don’t want to fight for me anymore. I want to give up, just stop all of this madness. I keep telling myself that it is so pointless to continue, that I am not going to be mourned long, that there is nothing in this life I’m going to be missing out on. I can’t love, I can’t be, not without feeling so incredibly wrong. I want nothing from this place. It holds no magic for me anymore, no mystery that must be solved. I figured it out as well as I ever will and now all I want is out.

I don’t want to have a future. I want to jepordize it so that there is no chance, no more excuses for me to continue. I’m only doing this because it is what I was taught. It’s not what I want. Fuck, it’s never what I want. I know I am a failure for willing this all away. So many people certainly have it worse, but they want to be here, for whatever reason. In these moments of clarity, it is not the uselessness and pointlessness that hurts the most, but the knowledge that there is something in me, somewhere, that has inadvertently kept me going. I know that this survival instinct is so fucking futile, and it disgusts me that I hold onto something after learning just how ugly it is on the inside. I’m stupid for doing so, just as worthless as the people I hate for accepting this system, embracing and loving it for the pseudo power it grants them.

Wave salvation in my face and I’ll throw it all away. I don’t want to go to the interview in two days; I’d rather…not be around instead.

How fucked up is that? I need to stop thinking like this. I need to face what I hate. But all I want is an easy way out, a permanent darkness where consciousness doesn’t exist. Where I don’t exist. I want to never have a thought again. Because I think I won’t make it. I can’t bear going on when it’s nothing but pain and hatred and wallowing and lies. This isn’t going to change. I’m not going to wake up tomorrow and feel like I live in a beautiful world, with wonderful people that I want to care for and help. If I make it, I’m going to hate every second, and I’m so sure of it…that I can’t stand it.

If I live I’m an idiot. If I die I’m a failure who gives up too easily. There is nothing to win, always a draw.

Always grey.

Negativity.

I’m awake, isn’t that shocking? I only got up out of bed so I’d stop planning. That’s what I was doing, laying there. It’s been so fucked up, I don’t know what I can truly do anymore. I’m drowning in all of those setbacks, and telling myself over and over, proving over and over, that the list of reasons to continue has nearly been erased blank, that this is all a useless, stupid struggle I would have been smart to quit back when I was 14 and knew better.

I knew it then, I know it now, but I hesitate. Over and fucking over, like an idiot. A stubborn, worthless thing that is too obsessed with trying to win, trying to show that all those people that they were wrong about me, that I can be this way and breathe. But I’ve been lying. I’m always lying, even to myself, because sometimes the thought of not being here is more scary than surviving. It’s my parents, I guess. My dad will write me off as yet another mark against him, some cruel joke of the universe to grant him a child that didn’t want to survive beyond 20. And my mom will cry and ask all those stupid questions about what she did wrong. I don’t know mom, don’t you remember when I told you that I wanted to die?

Every time I try to say something, the words catch in my throat and I choke on them. I feel the bile rise, and I swallow it down, thinking, “Now don’t be a weak, snivelling child”. But it’s not the voice of my tormentors anymore; it’s my voice. I am the enemy now, because I built up these walls, laid every fucking brick, and it’s my right to tear it all down. Tear it down and begin anew with an even stronger foundation, with even more hate imbedded in the walls. Or…I can just end. If I don’t want it anymore, my castle can be torn down and never rebuilt. It can wither away, dust on the wind, as I do that deed everyone is going to hate me for.

But didn’t they always hate me? Wasn’t I always the bitter disappointment? These days it’s hard for me to sympathize with them. They should have looked, should have seen it coming. Truth be told, it’s not their responsibility anyway. If they blame themselves that their choice. But my reasons are my own. My choice is my own. I’m so dreadfully tired of people believing that parents own their children, that they can somehow control them by laying down the law. I care a great deal for my parents; they have kept me after I failed their tests. But I never asked for this life, and I never asked them to hold me above the water. I think I would have preferred to drown. I deserve to be left behind, learn life’s lessons without a protective safety net to catch me when I make a mistake. I want consequence, because this life of protection has done nothing but make me will away being human, will away that survival instinct that is supposed to save us all like a life raft. But it’s not their fault; it’s mine. I should have strayed a long time ago. They made their mistakes, so I am entitled to my own. I should have ran.

See it through…if only for proof.

I’ve been caught up in reading, consuming my waking moments in dark, cruel characters that are always on the brink of suicide. Rampant self-destruction. It’s funny that these things almost propel me in a way; they provide some weak, watery resolve in me. It shatters in the dark though, always does. When I’m lying there, thinking about how useless my toiling truly is…it all just falls away, then glares back at me like the fragments of a mirror. So many little pieces, my pathetic reasoning cast aside in one fluid, hopeless motion. It’s so easy to fall into the darkness, to let it take over the living aspect of this, to be my automated savior that does the awful deed of existing for me.

Tomorrow I go to where my dad works. They’re having some sort of job fair that I’m being forced to go to. I already put in my resume for a few jobs, but I know that with my useless talents it will do absolutely no good until they see my face. I know that’s one of the reasons I haven’t been hired; my anxiety was always too strong to permit me to bear the thought of facing a possible future employer face to face, where through sheer humiliation and misery I would have to list just how much I am unqualified with a fake, disgusting grin. I’ve never been one for begging. And to me, that’s what it would be.

I don’t feel it today; my apathy has been washing over me the last few weeks, thickening like a fog until I am blinded to all else. It’s best that I don’t feel it. It’s best that I’m distant when my failure—my hopefully final failure—becomes apparent to everyone. I already have seen it coming, but they are ignorant of it. 

I lie in wait for it to be over. For that last precious shred of my sanity to be torn away, where my stupid, weak mind catches up to the fact that has been blatantly clear to all other sides of me for some time: I am doomed to fail. It was meant to be this way. I don’t belong here.  

I wish for it to be over. I wish not to have to do it myself, that one damn pardon. But I know that I am the only salvation now, that I always was. Let it be done, let it be finished. I just can’t bear to breathe and know what I know anymore.