I try to tell myself everything I do is not for you
My life it revolves
The sun the stars the moon
I stand before the mirror trying to see myself clearer
Tears morph my body’s shape
Blurred like spilled paint
I whisper, “I hate you” as I stare at my face
I can’t breathe, so faster I try
Lightheaded vision, gagging, wanting to die
But the most I do is cry.

I drift lonely, lonely for you
You’re my depression, you’re my muse
Self hatred claims my compass,
So I follow it into the forest
And loathe your loving,
It infects me like fungus
Now I’m lost and scared
Inside my brain, you inject your lethal stain
I follow you on your path of wonder till I collapse
Exhaustion, pain, death, relapse

I idolize you and your flaws
How you seem so free
While around me forms a mist of misery
A clouded conscious with what I made you my life
Now I hate everything that I am,
And nothing’s right
Unmotivated, unsure
I allow you to engulf me; careless for a cure
I know what I’m doing but I don’t know who I am
Still on my knees I pray to you,
The blood slain of my own lamb.
My addiction to your presence has forced me to beg for more
I don’t know why I can’t end this war.

First I feel it in my fingers and toes
The buzzing that grows
Grows into a quiver
From my thigh to my spine; a shiver

The pain of numb so few will know
Vision as black as crow
I trace my raised skin
What made the tingles begin?

It hangs in the air.
It.  a poisonous cloud
heavy, smoke like, choking.
I can't.
It is dark,
It has captured.
It fills my head
fear, stop, numb.
I can’t think.
It has wrapped up my tongue,
controls my speech
slurred, empty, wordless.
I can’t speak.
It is in my eyes,
Dark, lifeless, scared.
It won’t let the word be seen.
I can’t see.
It has filled my chest.
It forces its way down my throat,
It pulls in my ribs,  
It claws at my lungs,
I can’t breathe.

It's in these moments of calm that I feel the most panic
These moments when the TV is on
telling me a detailed story of someone else's life,
these moments when I am the most distracted,
that I am also the most aware of what's happening inside my body
Inside my head
It's in these moments of calm that I am the most afraid.

.
… and the look of fear
co-existing with pain
     on a contorted face
that knows
it is in mortal difficulty,
as ragged fingers

     clutch,

          clutch,

at a fire they cannot reach,
ripping agonies react,
     to an enforced cardiac episode,
as blackness closes in
gravity heaves its hardest,
but the fall is fake,
a red herring in the event,
     and the weight of the world

presses down, searching,
retracts
waiting,
presses down, searching,
retracts
waiting,

as breath is given freedom
in exhalation to the light,
     that slowly rolls back
the pitch hue of the void,
returning back images,
feeling,
a new belief,

          and the fire inside quietens,

                    and the fire inside quietens,

to the intense glow
     of a burnt aching heart.



© Pagan Paul (2018)

depression is the *****  i want to punch in the ******* face
anxiety is her ******* side kick
panic dances around with them like a ******* background dancer
well have i got news
im done dancing
this is a fight i will fight
but not to the death
i will not let this **** me

My relationship with mirrors is strained.
When I look I usually see what's probably
myself. I look better, probably, than before
when I slept no more than
3 hours every night
and spluttered through life
choking on words and stumbling over
misconceptions.
Now all of that is merely a buzz
trampled by a maximum dosage of meds
that let me function in life
but make everything a bit numb.
I much prefer numbness to personal nihilism.
Other times when I look in the mirror I
don't see much of anything.
When I'm in public and
the innocent looming presence of others
threatens my mind's fragile ego,
I see them abstracted in my periphery,
their glinting knives of eyes
sparing me a passing glance
(She's just smiling politely,
but my skewed eyes glimpse
faux teeth and behind them gargled, ****** judgements. I don't judge the digust.)
and I skim over a transparency
of myself in the mirror.
Too bad I can't actually disappear.
(Or maybe I can.
But I try to stray a little farther from those thoughts.)
Sometimes I feel heartbreakingly
ugly in that mirror. Lonely. Unwanted.
Even with all those doting eyes on me.
I feel relied upon for something. To be
the one who makes them laugh. The one
who fills the silence. The one
who works hard even with setbacks.
(Do they even expect that of me? Or do I?)
When
in reality
I'm none of those things.
Not truly. Not really.
Theres always that tug of opposition in me,
that feeling of ingenuity, a touch of facade.
But I don't want them to see an ugly side.
The side that mistrusts violently,
that lies stagnant with thoughts screaming.
Clamming up in the face of oppressing quiet.
The side
that rears its head when
they look a little too close.
Maybe it's my truest self, that broken side.
I wouldn't know. There
are too many walls. I can't even break them
myself.
Or maybe I've broken them all,
but I'm blindfolded,
feeling around an abyss with my eyes
wide open,
vision obscured by skin-tight fabric.
I could just,
untie that knot behind my head,
spiral further and further down--
just to feel something else--
But it's safer in this uneasy emotion.
I dont know if I'll ever find myself in
the mirror again.