soft belief
in which i burn too bright.
I don’t know how we got here, I truly don’t. Sitting in front of the mirror, not quite sobbing, not quite looking okay, either— something in between, something in the abyss I call the “feeling that hasn’t yet gotten a name from me.” I mean, what did I expect? Here and there, maybe, I won a fight. Here and there, I kept some blood inside me. But still, the last months have been a loss after a loss. Death after death.
It’s all a game of empathy. I know this, I’ve rehearsed it. I spend my nights hugging myself, partly because of the cold, partly because I want to feel love again. Not that I don’t get love, I do, I just don’t know how to absorb it. Love walks towards me and passes right through. In my life, I’ve been a part of a lot of phenomena, but this one is the worst.
See, the thing about me is, there are no workarounds. I got taught to work around my issues, but I couldn’t. I am not living illness, I am not irreparable, I know that. It’s difficult to believe the facts when your head is spinning and your brain feels like malleable clay.
I leave the light on for my brother to go to sleep. I wake up to my father shouting. I don’t know what being a person means. How should I behave? I feel like I’m in a movie directed by some freak who had to project his issues somewhere. The second thing about me is, I’m not able to comprehend what makes the person in the mirror me. Is it his eyes? Or his voice? Or his fear & sickly look & pale face & dark eyebags? It could be anything, really. You do not know what it feels like to be me— I say, & even though this is not quite a lie, it is not quite the truth, either. Because I do not know what it feels like to be me, either.
I don’t get it. I don’t get why the world is in this limbo where it doesn’t hate me enough to kill me off, but doesn’t love me enough to let me enjoy my life. Have you ever felt like you needed to run? I feel like this constantly, except I don’t have anywhere to go. It’s sad, I guess. Kind of. But I don’t know how to change anything, you know.
I don’t even know if you can change it. Listen— I’m not about to talk about how life is never getting better. I’m not the type of guy. This is just my way of begging for an angel above to come and save me. My own, personal prayer.