"A beautiful an ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain." -- Matthew Arnold

Sometimes I think death follows me. I can hear it, just behind me, slightly to the side, tapping at the corner of my brain, asking for entrance. And sometimes I almost give it what it asks for.

Like tonight, tonight I want to just collapse and cry until nothing is left in me. It’s not because anything has happened, or because I’ve been disappointed by something or someone… it’s just because death is so close to me, so close, demanding everything I have and no matter how hard I try to give it, I can’t.

I’ve been lying here for over an hour, just certain that if I try hard enough I can will this spectre of life to leave me and I will be released.

Beautiful release.

I remember suddenly why I have been in this darkness before, with a gun to my head, a knife to my wrist. But I can’t die by violence, not tonight. The melancholy is too sweet in such an oddly overpowering way that I know that if I tried to force my death, it would violate the moment.

Strange, isn’t it, how I can be so sensitive to this side of death? The soft, singing, almost sympathetic side that comes to me like an angel?

When most people think of death I’m sure they think of it as something dark, unpleasant, and altogether undesirable. “Death is a dull and dreary affair; my advice is that you have nothing to do with it.” I forgot who said that. Sometimes my otherwise brilliant mind happens to work that way… I remember what was said, but not by whom. I suppose the important thing is I remember what they said.

But I can’t agree with them, whoever it was. Death is never dull. It may sometimes be painful, gut wrenching in its unmerciful relentlessness to snatch away everything precious… But then when everything precious has already been snatched away, it is the sweetest madness you could ever imagine. The ultimate distraction from the pain that has come to call itself your life.

Who could resist such an offer?

I’m not holding onto life anymore, I know that it’s not my fault I’m still here. Times like these I find nothing more to live for.

God. Life passes, doesn’t it?

It goes by and I can’t find any reason to try to hold it back. It goes by so fast it makes me dizzy, sick… so sick, so sick of living I don’t want to live sometimes.

Like now.

It would just be easier if someone would stop the train, let me get off. Please, let me off.

And the tears come, and I let them, because I need some catharsis to maybe bring me back to life. Maybe, oh please… if you won’t let me die, will you please let me live?

Is it possible to be this numb? Dangling, as it were, between life and death? Can’t I ever do anything for myself? Or do I even want to? That’s a question I don’t feel like answering right now.

Just let myself believe I want all the formulaic cures and the reason I can’t be happy is because I can’t have them. Because I have no one to hold me at night. Because I don’t have the perfect body. Because I don’t have a cool car, or job, or a lot of money or the opportunity, will, and means to travel all over this fucking world.

But you know what? That’s not what my problem is. I think my problem is that I don’t even want any of these things. It’s that I want so much more… I don’t care about them. But the more that I want… is it too much? It doesn’t seem like I can find it.

I want a purpose. I want assurance that the story will go on without me. Hell, I want proof that there even IS a story to go on, with or without me. Isn’t that odd? How I want to know that I’m safe, inside of a bigger plan that no matter what I do, I can’t screw it up. That would be nice to know. But unfortunately, nobody can tell me that for sure.

I exist presently inside a sickness of the soul. It is virulent and no one quite believes that it is as detrimental to me as it really is. I wonder if it is because I smile, because I go on doing what looks like it needs to be done.

I suppose they think I’m strong, that I do not have to talk to shadows on my walls to find a relief for this ache of loneliness. I am not lonely for company. I have that easily and in plenty. Conversation will not dull the pain anymore than another shot of tequila will cure a hangover.

I am soul-friend lonely, needing someone there. And I know that Someone exists; sometimes I even think I know who it is. But then why am I still here, still alone? You see, that’s my problem. Not that there’s nobody here with me, but that I am utterly alone within my own torment.

Drowning. Solo.

It is hard to keep my head above water; I’m so tired, so tired of treading water, of breathing, of struggling against the undertow and the gravity of the warm, cool water that tugs with liquid persuasion. It would be so easy just to slide over the edge. Just slide.

The coolness of metal is relief inside my parched mouth. I fight the urge to suckle, for I know it will give me no moisture, no nourishment. Yet if I suckle hard enough it might give me relief, release.

I am suddenly outside myself, seeing the cool silver shimmer between my full lips. And what I see frightens me, breaks my heart.

I see a young girl, dark eyelashes resting with butterfly tremors against her pale skin, one crystal tear sliding shamefacedly over the porcelain surface.

Her lips, swollen and red from her crying and her attempts at beauty-in-a-tube, tremble around a foreign object that offers to her its deepest soul in exchange for hers.

A bullet for her brain.

I want to put my arms around her and hold her and comfort her. I want to take her pain inside of me and let it break my heart instead of hers. I want to rescue her.

Some higher power wants me to live. They have found my weakness and turned it against me. They know my tender heart toward those in pain, and they know that while I will not think I am worth the energy of being rescued, I will not be able to refuse that rescue to another.

So They have turned me into another. “Physician, heal thyself” has taken on an entirely new meaning.

Am I capable, though, of healing this girl? This girl who feels as if her soul is dying and no one hears, no one but the darkness that expects nothing more from her.

Her quiet, trembling pleas for help have fallen upon deaf ears and the only one who cares about what happens to her now is Death. He is determined to have her for his own. Well now my ears have been opened. Can I stand here and watch as she takes his hand and goes with him?

Can I refuse the responsibility that has been placed on my shoulders?

“Come on, baby,” I whisper, and she blinks in surprise. “I love you. I’m not the only one, I can’t be. Please don’t leave me here like this.”

The silver barrel slides from her mouth with a soft moist murmur. “Who are you?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly, feeling a tear slide down my face to match hers.

“Well, come here, then. We can be lost together.”

And so I find myself staring at a cold heavy gun in my hand, wondering if I and this girl will be the only ones who ever love ourselves, each other. And if that will be enough.

Anyone who knows me would tell you how I am.

They'd say I smile, that my smile is brilliant. That I have the kind of smile that makes complete strangers interrupt my dinner in nice restaurants just to tell me how lovely it is.

They'd say my eyes sparkle with some sort of life that is deeper than anything anyone has found before. They'd say my voice fairly dances with passion, with joy, with an eagerness to suck the marrow out of life. They'd say that when I cry, the sobs are deep and hard - that my soul breaks into pieces and bleeds through my sorrow.

No one who knows me would know me now.

They would wonder who this girl is with expressionless eyes and lips that have settled into lines of passive unpleasure. They would wonder who had stolen her voice and given her a cadence of monotones and cynical lemon twists. They would want to know why I can't cry.

But some wounds go too deep for feelings. Some pain is only numbness.

And anyone who knows me now understands why it is that I crave the pain. Why I reach for things that should tear me apart - things that should make me wake up and wonder where I've been. They might understand why I keep running deeper into the darkness, embracing the nightmare, struggling to get it under my skin and into my soul.

They would see why I keep grasping for sharp edges and silver blades and things to make me bleed - so that I can prove to myself that my heart still beats.

I want to hurt myself. I want to do things to destroy myself - just so I can see if there was ever anything worth destroying in the first place.

Was there?

Is this what they call depression? Is this what they prescribe medication for? Is this what gets people tied up and sedated in blank white rooms with generic-faced nurses and orderlies to give them sponge baths and empty their catheters?

What the fuck are they thinking? That won't help anyone. People want to know they're alive, not that they're in some sort of horrid eggshell that people keep tip-toeing around.

Don't let me get away with this. Don't wrap me up in cotton and give me three feet of air space.

Scream at me, scratch me, hit me, bite me, hurt me - make me mad. Make me cry. Make me bleed. Make me feel something, goddamn it! Please - please, I'm begging you. Just … prove to me that I'm alive, and then convince me that I want to be.

Wisdom is a funny thing. Even when you don't have a controlling interest in her, sometimes you feel her standing behind your shoulder or humming to you in a song. I don't know much about wisdom, personally. Anybody who knows me will tell you that.

I'm just me, and sometimes I feel like 'me' is someone important. Other times I know I'm not, but I like to think I am anyway.

You have to wonder what mysteries are inside me. I don't know them myself. I've tried to cut myself open to see… I think somewhere inside I was halfway convinced I would either bleed diamonds or sewer sludge… of course my veins couldn't carry just blood. That would be… well, normal.

You know how in Genesis it says, "And the world became formless and void"? - that's what I feel like lately... like I've suddenly lost my shape and I'm just waiting for re-creation.

"…And the Spirit of God moved across the face of the waters."

That'd be nice. Soon?

Sometimes, like right now, I just lie still on the couch or somewhere with music playing in the background. I feel the smallness of my body and the weight of all the future and wonder what will happen.

I have a premonition somedays - like today - that great things are in store for me, that greater things will be expected of me. It is moments like this that inspire me to cry out for mercy with all my feeble strength, for there is also an underlying shadow to these feelings - the possibility of utter failure.

I feel the expectations of Heaven and earth, and for some odd reason, hold my breath for fear that I will miss the cue that has not been shown to me - that I will stutter the lines I've not been given to learn.

The waiting spotlight glares accusingly as I ascend the stage - very few of the players (for here there is no audience) take notice of my presence. I am little more than a prop right now.

But our Audience of One - who is the playwright and the director - seems to whisper in my ear that, for a few moments, I will possess Center Stage. It frightens me. One chance to shine is all I get. That's all. One chance to get it right.

And they wonder why I fear each passing moment and grow uneasy as the years slip by.

It is because I alone hear what is being whispered so loudly to my heart - that I will one day be commanded to perform.

I'm scared again. I wish I could stop being so scared all the time.

I'm scared to try to get a job, because so far I haven't been able to get a good one with someone who is honest with me. I hate rejection. It makes me feel worthless.

Am I so sensitive to others' judgments?

I'm scared to go back to school. I barely made it through this semester, although I did pass both my classes with "B"s, I know I should have gotten "A"s. I'm a smart kid, and they were easy classes. But I'm afraid of failure, and that makes it hard for me to succeed.

When did I start caring so much that it impaired me?

I'm scared of staying here, in this little college town with nothing to do. I'm afraid that if I stay here now, I'll never get out. And that’s the one thing I'm not afraid of - leaving.

When did running away become my favorite solution? Am I such a coward?

I'm scared of reaching out to other people, because almost every time I do, I regret it. I don’t like to get so close that I'm suffocating - I like to have my space to breathe. But the people I find are either the ones that shake off my pleading hand or pull me in so close I can't see myself anymore.

Is everyone so afraid of losing themselves? Or do some wish they could be lost?

I'm sure someone would diagnose me with social anxiety disorder. On days like this, I stay in my house and don't want to go anywhere or see anyone. I just want to stay here and think, and imagine what it would be like if I could get up and go somewhere that I had friends who would be happy to see me. Somewhere sunny. California represents that dream to me, although I'm not sure things will be much different once I get there. People are the same wherever you go.

I can dream, can't I? (Am I willing to admit that dreaming isn’t good enough?)

I need to stop being so scared, and I wish I knew how. I need someone here with me, in the flesh, who knows me and loves me and knows what it means for me to do anything.

I used to be courageous, you know. I used to be the conversation-starter. The one who would charm people into trusting me. And I never betrayed their trust. But something happened. One day, my charm didn't work. One day, people stopped trusting me, as if I were untrustworthy. Then, worst of all, someone I trusted told me I was worthless and hateful, and a best friend became the deepest wound I'd ever experienced.

Will it ever get back to good? Could it ever be better, even than it was then?

I was outgoing until someone told me I wasn't. When did I start believing people so completely? When did their words start defining my life?

When did I lose myself? Will I ever be found?

I just wish I could stop being so scared.

The feeling has passed now—the desperation, the fear. The utter panic that swept through me and filled me with fury at my own weakness - and others’ exaggeration of it. In its place is lethargy; a quiet peace that lets me smile softly with exhaustion, while still blinking back tiny tears of longing.

And a residual shame at the desire for rest.

I have been so well-programmed by the demands of those who wish to see me reach a perfection far beyond their own that I cannot even allow myself the indulgence of a mid-afternoon nap without feeling the whispers of inferiority. Of mortality. Of normality.

Maybe it is the knowledge that I do not just need rest but am, in fact, weak and broken. Shattered by the unfeeling rejection and simultaneous need of a man who could not see me. Strained by the academic load of trying to be too much too soon. Lost in the wilderness of unfamiliar independence with no instruction of how to use my compass, my roadmap.

And no one to walk with me. Oh, I have plenty of people willing to push me, to pull me; to shout out direction. But no one who will stay beside me throughout the journey. Is that what this steady feeling of despair is? Loneliness? And why is it that my eyes have turned fatalistic? That the sound of yet another mistake, another failure, coming down upon me has no effect other than the mild sigh of one who has come to expect it?

Perhaps I have. Expected it, I mean. Have my expectations only been proven correct because it would have happened anyway, or because they caused it to happen? I am stronger than this. I know that I am, from wounds survived in the past. From the long-denied memories of a sexual intrusion, not fully understood and never wanted. From the confusion that sprang from the advances of a female predator upon the already malformed sexuality of a young girl. From the pain of long years of forceful rejection by her peers.

No, none of that has broken the woman that is I. So why should anything start affecting me now?

And I close my eyes, and let the exhaustion wash over me, and tell the voice in the back of my head to go fuck itself - I will be strong another day. Today I have no strength.

Today I pulled out a knife to cut for the first time. Not to kill; I have tried that before and do not want to go back. But I wanted to cut. I wanted to bleed. The pain didn’t really do anything; didn’t distract from the turmoil inside. But my heart skipped a little faster at the sight of bright red on ivory; my breathing caught at the stain on my skin. That can’t be a good thing.

I’m a failure as a human being. That’s what my parents say. Oh, they don’t say it, and if they ever heard me think that, they’d deny it hotly and tell me they love me, they’ll always love me. But it’s what they don’t say that I hear. The between-the-lines stuff. They’re disappointed. “What did we do wrong?” they want to know.

So narcissistic of them. So damned egotistical. So fucking egocentric! What did they do wrong? they ask, as if someone will vindicate them. They want someone to tell them they couldn’t have done anything different. That I was just fucked up from the beginning.

They want to draw attention to themselves: oh poor little us, look what a fuck-up we’ve got for a daughter! Pity us! We’re her parents. Do you see how she reflects on us? Fuck them! They don’t live inside my skin! They don’t see that I am not them. I’m not even theirs. I am this bastard child of the universe, this ultimate outcast who can’t keep anyone because she’s so damn needy and so needy because she can’t keep anyone around. Everyone leaves. Everyone despises. Everyone ends up loathing this creature. I’m worse than a mutant. Worse than a monster.

At least they have activists on their side. Who do I have? Myself.

Pity? No, fuck no I don’t want pity. I don’t need your goddamned pity. I don’t fucking want you to feel sorry for me! I just want to be left alone or respected. If you can’t respect me, don’t talk to me, don’t look at me, don’t touch me. Don’t listen when I speak unless you will hear what I say.

Today’s cut was the first. The knife wasn’t even very sharp and the blood was more pink than red.

Strangely intriguing, the tiny pink trickle down my ankle, where I could excuse it as a shaving-nick. But all at the same time I know—if anyone saw it or knew about it, it would just be one more mistake I’d made. One more shred of evidence that I’ve lost my common sense, if I ever had any.

Brilliant, she tells me. My mother says I am brilliant. But she whispers that I am an idiot. That I don’t see things right in front of my nose. That I’m immature and irresponsible. I’ve no doubt that she really does think I’m brilliant. Bright as merry fucking sunshine.

But I am still a failure.

added 22.06.02

I gave up cigarettes and alcohol so completely that I don't even want them anymore. It's almost depressing, really; I wish I wanted them. I wish they would do something for me. But they don't. The only thing left to me is driving. Driving so fast, so recklessly, my control is paper-thin and I only smile wider when I feel the traction of the tires slip just a little on the dusty road. But I know I own control. I know that I will not lose it unless I choose to.

The choice taunts me. Just a quick swerve of the wheel, a sharp pull on the emergency brake, just let the tires catch in that patch of gravel and tip the nose towards the ditch... it wouldn't take much.

I can see it happen in my mind. I can feel the force of gravity swing me around and pull the seatbealt taut over my chest. I can smell the burning rubber... hear the squealing protest of the tires, the creak of the metal as it bends in ways it wasn't meant to.

But my eyes flicker with tempered impatience and my lips tighten with bated annoyance at the knowledge that I will not choose loss. Panic chases me down and beats through my chest and the jacked-up tempo on the radio mirrors The Running in my blood, but they show me that I am too alive to die and that any pain I choose now would not be glorious, even in a gritty, struggle-of-life way that might give me satisfaction.

No, any pain I find now of my own choice will be empty. It will not satisfy even for a moment; much the way I feel the emptiness of my fantasies even as my lips whisper his/her name and my eyes squeeze shut to just try to see his eyes or her lips or his shoulders moving above me or her hair falling against my neck.

Nothing is left to me now - no escape. No oblivion to be found in either kind of death - because I can no longer die. And the pain of trying to reach that death is just empty and useless. No distraction. No release. Just lots and lots of nothing.