When you look at me,
What do you see?
Someone creative?
Someone kind?
Someone beautiful?
I don't know many more,
I am not you.
But this is what I see,
When I look at me:
A monster with no heart.
An empty being.
A disordered pig.
A lost cause.
A basket case.
A lying, conniving *****.
A mental breakdown in physical form.
A high BMI.
A poser.
A wannabe.
An embodiment of indecisiveness.
But this is just when I look at myself,
So I'm fine if I just don't look,
Right?

There is something blocking the light in front of me,
And creeping up behind me.
A shadow without a cast,
Seemingly moving by itself.
Killing the light fast enough,
For the darkness to catch up.

What drives us to take our lives?!
What turns the hand against the one it belongs to?
Something we resist wants to bring us down.
It is creeping up on you.

I recognize my privilege.
I recognize my uselessness.
I recognize my inability to function.
I recognize that I may not be capable/disabled physically. But I am emotionally and mentally.

Though most of the voices are dimmed and quieter than before. They are not gone.

I feel them at the back of my mind.
Pressing at the barrier that is inforced by medication.

My self-loathing is stronger than ever though.
At every and one situation where I keep failing them.
At every and one situation where I keep being a disappointment.
At every and one situation where I am a disgrace to my mother's memory.

I know I am garbage.
I know I am worthless.
I know I am privileged
And Gods do I know I don't deserve anything I have.

Maybe I am proving that ***** right.

But the thing is.
I didn't ask for this.
For whatever broken thing that makes my DNA.
I didn't ask for this existence. This life.

I must have done something terrible in my past life to have been born so broken and in disrepair in this one.

I want to throw up. I want to die.
I don't want to be a part of this collective.
I don't want to breath anymore.
Let me drown.
Let me break my body into pieces against hard asphalt.
Let me suffocate in a car filled with gas.
Let me hang from a tree in the most secluded part of the park.
Let me drink the poisons under the sink.
Let me starve myself until my heart gives.
Let me burn underneath the hot sun until only the crows come to great me.
Let me fall from the highest point of a cliff.
Let me drink all the pills in the bottles to numb me to sleep.
Let me slit my veins vertically across my arms.
Let me puncture an artery so I may bleed out.

Let me
Let me
Let me
LEt mE
LeT Me
LET ME

Let me breathe into the icy tundras of the north where my lungs will freeze and toes will turn blue.
Let the bite of a most wondrous creature in the humid south taking me into fevered dreams.
Let me bite the built so I swallow it whole and paint the walls, red, pink, grey, and wet.

Cant, you just let me pass on and away?

"No," says the instinct to self preserve the only thing that keeps me tied to this place.

I once dreamt that there were nails in my forearms,

from the soft inside of my elbow to the thin skin around my wrist,

and someone pulled them out one by one.

my blood was deep crimson and thicker than honey, but there was no pain.

I wonder if I’m really living when I’m not enduring excessive hurt;

I wonder at how so many lights don’t seem to lift the blackness.

beckoned by fire and sadness,

even Syl broke trying to be her own. how can I make it?

it gets difficult exactly when it needs to be easier.

more dissatisfied with the silence than I’ve ever been before

but the words I say don’t rustle the quiet either.

I know my epitaph would read:

“I was nothing more than this.”

I even know exactly what my hell would look like,

a brimful and just a little more, sensory rapture of the silliest kind.

why don’t I change? why is the same sky above me and the same gloom in my throat?

there’s so much I wish I was but will never be.

only I remain, always –

an outcome unpleasant and undesired, but the only outcome that has ever been.

only I remain.

No one knows me better than my demons.
I’ve been caring for them, nurturing them
like a parent afraid to see them leave.

My demons have remained faithful to me.
There is no part of me more forgiving.
I’ve fought with them, and tried to destroy them.

But my demons never abandoned me.
They’ve stayed with me, always speaking to me
kindly, with their gentle, sensitive voice.

My demons are my intimate partner.
At my worst and earliest suffering,
they arrived, eager to help me adapt.

My demons epitomize devotion.
They don’t have feelings for anyone else.
They only care about protecting me.

Sometimes, I try to confront my demons.
And then they just listen, like a friend should,
and offer to let me live without them.

But my demons know better than I do.
Feeding on self-loathing, the more they eat,
the more self-loathing I am to become.

My demons have figured survival out.
If I just choose self-loathing over love,
they will stay a part of me forever.

I walked alone that night,
Uphill through the snow.
And when I arrived at the place
Not a single face did I recognize.
I got a beer and sat around,
Looking down so it wouldn't seem
Like I was staring.
The ice in my frozen nerves
Became blacker than the roads
Outside that I drove here on.
And this is why I wish I
Was truly dangerous. No one
Would ignore me, yet nobody
Would venture too close. I'd
Be an animal in a zoo.
But instead I'm a scared,
Lost puppy stuck in a
Land of lions and snakes.
But I poker-faced it so when you
Finally arrived, the little
Loud part of me crying for a
Place and body and mind
I could love instead of
Loathe withered away. Or
So I thought. I ought
To know better by now.
All it took was another
Chance not taken, and
I lost all the chips again.


-
by Aleksander Mielnikow