I wrote this when I was 18 years old, remembering the dark and lonely days of high school. I sought treatment not long after this. Though I wouldn’t call treatment successful, it did give me the name and reality of this affliction. I’m 21 years old now, and though I am not happy everyday, I still fight the fight, and choose not to end my life. Why? Because I looked up and allowed the universe to surprise me. There are still so many good things, things you couldn’t even dream of, strength you didn’t even know you had, beauty that takes your breath away. I hope you know, wherever you are, that love and happiness will find you, unasked and unexpected, and this is not the end. I love you and stay alive, my friends.

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I sing to myself in the shower, I clutch the skin on my bare back, my fingers hold me together, rocking back and forth. Like the pendulum of clock, I’m running out of time. Sometimes I wish I can just stay there, soak, until the water erodes me. The music beats in my head.

There’s a lack of color here.

This time it’s fact not fiction…for the first time in years.

Breathing still. I don’t know why. I feel dead all the time. There used to be voices in my head, but they’ve left me. It’s all quiet here, in my head, too quiet. It presses on me, it suffocates me, I feel choked like I only have enough air to keep me alive but even then what’s the point? I remember that I wake up tired, I feel tired all the time, I walk around like a zombie, a shell, a shadow, a ghost of person. I want to curl up in my cocoon of blankets and sleep and not wake up. I don’t want to wake up. I dread the morning. But here I am in the shower, the water beating my back, utterly lost.

If I could sleep forever

If I could sleep forever

I could forget about everything

I drag myself through the day. Or rather the day drags me. I feel hollow, the echo in my head and in my chest reverberates, the throb of numbness weaves throughout. I speak with my larynx, I walk with my feet, I see but I don’t see, I don’t feel anything. Life’s made up of gray matter, sickly now, with dread and emptiness. My voice, my laugh has a hollow ring that frightens me.

All around me are familiar faces

Worn out faces

Worn out places

Bright and early for the daily races

Going nowhere

Going nowhere

I go through the motions of living, but I’m not alive. I’m always aware of my heartbeat nowadays, I hear it in my head, it tries to beat out of my chest, out of my throat, like a rat trying to jump ship. It’s so useless, I want it to just shut down all ready. There’s a small part of me, struggling down there somewhere, in the blackness, I can feel her sometimes. I’m like her, I’m trapped too, everything’s too heavy for me, my body, my existence, I’m collapsing, I’ve collapsed under its weight. I look in the mirror and I don’t see anybody. My eyes are empty.

I’m looking at you through the glass

Don’t know how much time has passed

All I know is that it feels like forever

But no one ever tells you that forever feels like home

Sitting all alone inside your head

I want to feel something. Anything. I need an anchor, I’m fading. I don’t know where I am. My hand mechanically pours a shot of vodka. A burn in my chest. Gone. Another. Another. Again. Again. One more. Nothing anymore. I lay in my bed, not really sleeping, I don’t know where the hours go, each second feels like an eternity wrapped in Novacaine.

You’ve got to get better

Said it’s all in your head

The months they don’t matter

It’s the days I can’t take

When the hours move to minutes

And I’m seconds away

The wall hasn’t changed. Neither have I. It’s like I’m embedded inside of it, built in with the walls of my rooms, unmoving, immobile, crushed. I can’t move. Picking out keys from the piano, trying to revive some life in me but it brings me back lower, the ship to my lagoon of isolation, my own black hole. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know. Can’t rationalize my way out of this. I feel detached, disconnected from everything around me and in me.

Hello

I’ve waited here for you

Ever long

Tonight, I’ve torn myself in two

The only thing I can feel nowadays is anger. I’m so frustrated with myself I could choke. I’m enraged at my immobility, I want to tear at myself, rip me to pieces, end this useless existence that I wasted away. I am consumed by hate for my complete pointlessness. I burrow my nails into my back, grit my teeth and I want to scream. And then I go limp, everything’s sucked out of me again and I’m a dark, misshapen hole in this world. There’s something wrong with me. I can’t fight it. I don’t know how. Can’t anyone see what’s going on in here? This is real, isn’t it? Am I just crazy, oh God, oh God. I’m feeling too much, I’m feeling everything, I feel the earth pounding in my head and I just want it to stop.  I need to know this is real. I need to know that I’m not stuck here.

You can’t fight the tears that ain’t coming

All alone in the truth and the lies

Yeah, you bleed just to know you’re alive

Just a touch, to feel the steel against my skin, the contrast of the cold against my pulse. Saw back and forth gently now, like violin, like old times. Apply pressure now, just a little bit, back and forth, a little faster now. When the burn comes, I vaguely remember that it’s kind of like sex. A build up of heat, until it breaks over the shore. Ah. I even make the same face when I’m cutting as when I’m fucking. The breath out when I know I’m done. Let’s do it again. A little deeper this time. Feverish back and forth. Five more times, because the lines, I need them to be pretty. I still want them to look aesthetically pleasing. Sick, maybe, but if I’m going to cut myself, they’re going to be gorgeous at the very least. I remember someone said that to me too, she was fascinated, so ingenuous, I showed her and she said they were sexy. I know. Right? I lift the scissor blade from my skin, and observe my work. They’re beautiful. I feel productive, for some reason. Invigorated. Alive, somewhat. Not really. The lines shine, glinting in the light of my weak bed lamp. I squeeze my wrist to see the droplets and careful not to smear, I transfer the blood to a towel. Blood lines. I add a couple more, even out a couple of the fresh ones, fashioning them, re-lengthening them. Lovely. They throb, but at least the throbbing isn’t in my head anymore. Or at least I’ve kept it at bay for the moment. My chest and my brain are an empty whirr.

Oily marks

Appear

On walls

Where pleasure moments

Hung before

I lie awake in bed, can’t sleep. It’s the ungodly hours of the morning, but I don’t want to go to bed. I don’t want to wake up to my alarm clock, whenever I hear it ring or my mom’s footsteps in the hall, the sense of dread, the cold, sickly heat that I’m plunged into is too much for me. It swallows me whole. I don’t want to wake up, but I do, I do anyways.

Over and over, this cycle, again and again, and little pieces of me are lost along the way.

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Songs lyrics used (In order of appearance)

1. A Lack of Color - Death Cab for Cutie

2. If I Could Sleep Forever - Dandy Warhols

3. Mad World - Gary Jules

4. Through Glass - Stone Sour

5. New American Classic - Taking Back Sunday

6. Everlong - The Foo Fighters

7. Iris - The Goo Good Dolls

8. Hide and Seek - Imogen Heap