Sep 17
Let it be known, be a knot in the records of old, that I have never existed in these planar woven threads of nonexistence. In this moment, as I stand on the threshold between memory and oblivion, it is my deepest desire, my twisted adoration and immolation from self-loathing, to be remembered. Yet forgotten in that very same breath, I wish for nothing more. To be a ghost to those who knew me, to those who never will.
Six seconds. A peak of wrath I never thought I could reach. Fleeting moments of blinded redness and tunneled thoughts that I may make mistakes with impudence. Oh, how I would love to throw myself off the cliffs for the granted clarity thereafter. By a reason so meager and inconsequential, I lost respect for him whom I truly knew since birth and him who lived my life; for six seconds I did not know who I was.
Six seconds to unmake everything I was and everything I thought I could be. An instance that cracked the thin veneer of who I’ve been pretending to be my whole life - a good person. I wish I could have turned away but didn’t. Six seconds where time itself turned inward, coiling around my thoughts, suffocating reason. The world narrowed, all else fell away, and in the tunnel of my own making, I became him-the stranger who wears my face but speaks in unfamiliar tones I could never have spoken.
Now, as I stand on the precipice, watching the remnants of my own actions reflecting from the void. A mirror of who I was and who I might become, I am left with a question I cannot answer. Who am I, truly? Am I the one who lived a life of restraint, holding back the tempestuous intrusive impulses? Or am I the one who let it loose? The one who errs perpetually without fail.
I don’t know. Perhaps I never will. Perhaps the only truth is that I am all of them—the calm and the storm, the builder and the destroyer, the one who remembers and the one who wishes to be forgotten. He is all made of these moments, these fragments of time that shape him, whether I like it or not.
Six seconds. That’s all it takes and all it took. To lose. And when those six seconds return—and I know they will—I will stand at the edge once more, thinking maybe six seconds is enough to catch myself instead.
Six seconds. A peak of wrath I never thought I could reach. Fleeting moments of blinded redness and tunneled thoughts that I may make mistakes with impudence. Oh, how I would love to throw myself off the cliffs for the granted clarity thereafter. By a reason so meager and inconsequential, I lost respect for him whom I truly knew since birth and him who lived my life; for six seconds I did not know who I was.
Six seconds to unmake everything I was and everything I thought I could be. An instance that cracked the thin veneer of who I’ve been pretending to be my whole life - a good person. I wish I could have turned away but didn’t. Six seconds where time itself turned inward, coiling around my thoughts, suffocating reason. The world narrowed, all else fell away, and in the tunnel of my own making, I became him-the stranger who wears my face but speaks in unfamiliar tones I could never have spoken.
Now, as I stand on the precipice, watching the remnants of my own actions reflecting from the void. A mirror of who I was and who I might become, I am left with a question I cannot answer. Who am I, truly? Am I the one who lived a life of restraint, holding back the tempestuous intrusive impulses? Or am I the one who let it loose? The one who errs perpetually without fail.
I don’t know. Perhaps I never will. Perhaps the only truth is that I am all of them—the calm and the storm, the builder and the destroyer, the one who remembers and the one who wishes to be forgotten. He is all made of these moments, these fragments of time that shape him, whether I like it or not.
Six seconds. That’s all it takes and all it took. To lose. And when those six seconds return—and I know they will—I will stand at the edge once more, thinking maybe six seconds is enough to catch myself instead.
Sometimes we make mistakes in moments of anger.
