i have never hated myself more in my entire life. i want to twist and turn until i loosen every atom like stitches in my skin, to pull apart these muscles and these cells and break free like a breath of cold night air.
“time is temporary, you will not be the same person you are in a few months,” i have been promising myself.
well those months cannot come fast enough. what is stopping me from cutting ties with all the ropes that bind me, putting away the razors in my teeth and for once letting myself fall silent? i will blend into a backdrop of gray, a sea of wandering bodies and dulled eyes, of cocktail party thoughts and tired faces.
maybe it is because i am too selfless, or maybe it is because i am too selfish. is there even a difference anymore? does it even matter anymore?
no. and i am ready to untie these knots around my wrists and pull away from the sinewy strings, duplicitous red ribbons gleaming in the nightlight.
i am tired of not loving myself.
he overwhelms my senses, cologne and soap filling the capacity of my lungs like helium. he makes me light, i am a leaf in the autumn wind, crisp and bright, vibrant red and yellow and orange. he presses me between the pages of his novel heart and there i’ll stay, warm under the covers of silk parchment and smeared annotations.
well the only sound i can hear is the rush of my heartbeat in my head, thud thud thud, an off tempo rhythm that throbs with every pulse. it’s in my throat and fingers and mouth, i want to cough up my emotions, back arching against the kitchen floor, shaking hand wiping my lips to get rid of the taste.
i woke up this morning and i was tired, exhausted eyelids rubbed red by my fists, last night was spent hunched over into a leather notebook that i whispered to. and somewhere between three and four am, i felt myself turning to stone, a soul statue with dust settling on its shoulders rather than birds.
well this silence is dust and this heartbeat is a rock, this is the kind of heavy quiet that suffocates you, and i stopped breathing hours ago.
i can really tell how thick the emotion is in your voice by the way you choke up as you lie through your teeth. well, your tongue has turned black with the falsities that roll from it, the way the air whistles through your teeth as you exhale shakily, oh you are so new at this. now let me tell you something, let me paint you warning signs before your very eyes.
you do not have to choose, but if you do not start watching your steps, i will choose for you. and it will not be me who loses you, but you who loses me.
(i wrote pages upon pages of my bones in a leather notebook last night, i cut them open and poured out their marrow, i have never felt more exposed, bruised, battered in my whole damn life. and instead of helping me wrap my skeleton, you are only forcing the knives in further. and i am growing sick at the sight of you).
jesus christ.
why do i do this to myself? muted heartbeats and lungs filled to the brim with lead, i can’t swallow, i can’t breathe, i can’t think. as cliche as it is, some nights i honestly believe i am losing my mind.
i am far from okay.
i have fingers made from the ruin of desiccated cities and the dulled hearts of the men i stole them from, patched roughly together in an artist’s vision. well i told him that i destroy everything i touch, and he brushed it off like a fool should, i don’t want to hurt him but it is inevitable, unchangeable.
(but i don’t want to do this anymore. i am so tired of this back and forth current, the riptides that pull me out into the heart of the atlantic, laughing as i swallow gallons of saltwater and fight to stay afloat. i need a hand to hold, a lifejacket to cling onto, but i am too independent, too proud to hold onto anything less than my own living soul.)
and i am so tired of being myself.
so this is what jealousy feels like.
well if i had known it was the feeling of my heart shattering like ice, maybe i would have never looked in his direction in the first place. my eyes are like emeralds, they are crawling ivy, green green green.
i am too sober for this.
how foolish i am to ever think otherwise.
i don’t know, i really do not. he folded me like paper in his arms and told me i was beautiful in a sea of people, maybe he was proving a point or maybe he meant it. you know, i do not care for him because he is perfect, i care for him because he is perfect for me. he is just as manipulative and judgmental as i am, and he is that breath of fresh air when i’m entangled in the folds of self-loathing, swimming through currents of guilt.
but i cannot give him what he wants, and he knows it.
would you like to know a secret?
i am so tired of loving a man who loves another girl. for three hours last night watching him wanting her, i swear to god i thought i was going to throw up. this is not a poetic heartbreak, this was a slap in the face with cold, unforgiving hands, a wake up call with ice water: what the hell am i doing?
maybe it wouldn’t hurt if he had seen me there. but he didn’t and it does.
and he is using me just as much as i use every other guy. and i am stealing him away from the girl i viewed as nothing, the same girl who has his heart more surely than anyone else.
i feel sick.
and so it begins.
bleary eyes and false smiles, i don’t know what to expect from the next twelve hours, and, to be honest, i am not about to lift up my hopes to mountains only to discover they are cliffs. well, i have buttons pressed against my lips and needles in my pockets, this is the craving for three, four, five shots of vodka to watch the nerves melt away like skin on the beach. my tongue is too loose but my lips are too tight, there is no perfect medium anymore. let me be like an autumn leaf in the summer breeze, light enough to be carried away with the slightest breath, but sturdy enough to last for years in the binding of a vonnegut novel.
