Notes from a Misanthropic Mess

There is a hatred that festers under your skin, so visceral and primal, a contempt for yourself that you dare not speak aloud. The hatred burns, scorching flames peeling away at your skin. The fire does not rebirth you; you are no phoenix. An eternal flame, a persistent reminder of this anger you hold, and your hatred is a hollow weight you carry. The red-hot rage burns through you and then, then when the crimson anger eventually evaporates, all you are left with is a sea of grief. Blue, cold, and miserable. You hope to float in it, finally rid of the weight on your shoulders but the stones in your stomach make you sink, sink, sink to the bottom. You finally let out the guttural scream trapped deep within your gut and the water suddenly dissipates. Now you’re left sitting on barren ground, a greying sky above and nothing else in sight - just you and the exquisite horrors of your mind. You’re left longing for the warm and sunny yellow of your childhood - you can remember crawling into your parents’ arms and all that was terrible in the world would cease to exist. 

The need to escape this self is clawing at you, trying to find some way to burst out. You never realized that even stillness could be so viciously violent. You’ve struck a knife into your rib cage, and you continue to twist it, deeper and deeper and deeper. How do you live an eternity with someone you despise? How do you make peace with your greatest tormentor? The questions only grow, and you have no answers and the panic swells in your chest. You want the world to slow, to stop spinning on its axis so you can stitch together some semblance of a reason. Your mind is an apocalyptic wasteland, and it has convinced you - it’s the end of the fucking world.

But it isn’t. The sun comes up the next day and you have things to do and places to be - who gives a fuck about the things that crush you anyway? You lug this heavy heart around all day, hiding it behind smiles that don’t reach your eyes and lies, but you never let them see. You make mundane conversation about the weather or the trees and steal uncomfortable glances at mirrors, because you know it’ll be a stranger staring back at you. You’re not unlike a ghost, drifting from place to place, flitting away, until the night fall when you return to your usual haunt. And now what? Where do you put down all this hurt? Your tears are several and severe but serve you no good, so you turn them to ink. You pour your pain onto paper; you pray for the first time in years. In the dead of night, you attend a funeral for the girl you could’ve been. You write countless eulogies for the ingenuous little kid you were, apologizing to her profusely - I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. She deserved to grow into something lovely and warm, not this misanthropic mess 

And this is how it goes - each day of your life spent in this hellscape you paint, unmoored in this world. You will obliterate yourself, over and over, at the mercy of your mercurial mind. Your heart will be covered in frost, wary of all that it meets and even mistrustful of the ones you already know. 

This all there is it to it - you’re forever caught in this time loop that is faith forgotten and fraught with fear and fury.