I'm afraid of being a failure.
So I build,
And I architect,
And I learn,
And I grow.
I try to straighten out these stooped shoulders.
Quiet the aches and spaces in my spine.
I stand, even when I don't want to,
Even when my hands are shaking.
I am my own mountainous weight,
Bearing down on the world,
Bearing down on myself,
Until my legs collapse out from under me.
People say I'm brilliant,
That I'm a genius,
But what I am is a coward,
I run, and I run, and I run.
I fill myself with knowledge so I don't face the empty that is me.
Hide my face, cry and step.
Show my face, do not cry but step.
"I am hurt," I say to my own leaving backside.
"I am fine," I echo outside of the mirror.
I am hunter and hunted all at once,
A walking paradox, a collapsing singularity.
My own walls haunt me, almost as much as I haunt them. I do not leave.
I do not leave.-
I think that for the first time,
In a long time,
I'm happy to announce
That I'm still fighting,
Still trying to hold my head above water.
Some days I'm successful,
Other days, the shadows make a choir out of me.
On those days, my head becomes both a warzone and a mortuary;
A place where only the dead live.
Emotions become enemies and the silence is a tyrant.
But I take in a deep breath, feel my lungs embrace the oxygen,
Remind myself,
"I am here. I am alive."-
It is a painful process;
Whittling my bones into the shape of a better man.
It would be easier, I suppose,
If I were doing it for someone else.
Someone who is not myself.
This is because, as is typical of humanity,
I do not like to do favours for those I hate.-
Is it not a wonder?
The kind of certainty an object can hold.
How the tree sways in the wind,
Sure-footed in its grasp of the earth.
And then there's me,
Oscillating between unconscious and reality,
Holding in my palm the precious last of my sanity.
I fist it until it cracks,
And my horror bleeds out.-
I have a lot of pain,
I cannot always carry it.
It is on those days I dig my fingers into my skin,
Trying to plant hope in the poisonous earth that is my bones,
It is on those days I learn hope is a fragile thing.-
I hold a collection of fears in the pit of my stomach,
They huddle close together, strength in their numbers.
One of them is the fear of giving up.
I'm afraid I won't be able to carry on to the end,
That I will collapse under the weight of my pain halfway through this journey.
So I encase myself in stubbornness,
I diamond my will, let its facets reflect the horror that is me.
I mirror and I shapeshift,
Whatever will help me stay alive,
Even if it doesn't help me stay.
I disappear for days at a time,
Even if my body remains.
I strip all that is good,
Embrace the sad.
Make it the horse I ride till it falters,
Or perhaps I'll be the one to falter.
I sometimes wonder though,
If the price of staying alive is not living,
Then is it at all worth it?-
Perhaps I present myself in too grandiose a manner,
Painting flowers where there is only horror.
Perhaps I christian a thicket of thorns into a crown,
Wear it as my hands bleed.
But how else am I to acknowledge the man in the mirror?
To stare him in the face and say,
"I see you."-
I'm going to try.
I'll bury the smoke, and silence the emperor.
Not through war, I will not fight him.
I cannot win against a twin god and shadowed emperor.
I will love us back to life instead.
Forgiveness will achieve what hate cannot.
I shall promise myselves once again,
We will grow, and we will rise.
But not in the dark.
Not in the dark.-
When Adam and Eve left Eden,
It is said God placed a flaming sword to prevent access to the tree of life.
I am my own flaming sword,
A shield protecting myself from myself.
And as you'd expect from anything that gets too close to fire,
I burn.
My skin chars from my efforts to keep my emotions in,
To keep intruders out,
To keep myself out.
There are days I feel like nothing but a bundle of nerves,
A breath of oxygen away from combusting as my fear coats my skin.
On those days, I cast names upon myself.
Chains to keep me contained,
To keep me calm,
To keep me hidden.
I am an enemy behind my own front lines,
The shame to my own pride,
A child masquerading as an adult,
A forbidden fruit.-
The worst kind of madness is acquired in stages.
It creeps slowly into your mind, so that you don't notice until it has twisted your head quite a bit, attaching itself to your thoughts so you can't tell where they end and the madness begins.
When you finally notice, it then disguises itself. It shows you new perspectives, new pattern of thoughts. It makes you different, "special" is what it whispers into your ear.
Eventually, your mind begins to crack with the stress of containing what it wasn't conditioned to hold. It begins to shatter into pieces you can't put back together.
Normalcy becomes a forgotten dream, a memory lost in a fog guarded by the shards of your own broken mind, shards aiming to cut and hurt your unprotected feet.
At last, you realize you have nowhere to go, nowhere to hide from yourself. So you turn back to that madness, finally realizing it for what it truly is, but having little other choice, you embrace it lest you drown in an ocean of your own lonely tears.
The worst kind of madness eventually becomes you.-