Giving Up

Sometimes I shun them, fear them even, the burning red scars, but other times I can't help but embrace that one physical expression of my inward torment. When people meet me and I'm wearing short sleeves they stare first at my arms. My face, apparently, is less expressive. The pain in my eyes must burn less, or be muted altogether by now. Eyes are normal. Almost everybody has them. Arms are normal too, but not everyone has arms like mine.

Everything is weighted today. I'm sitting in the church with Debbie, Ellen, and Mary, who are scrapbooking, and I am not, since I don't. I'm pushing colored pastels around on a piece of paper in an effort to look artistic, although in reality my brain is freezing over. Something these days has glued my creativity to the inside of my head and it can no longer escape. And I am so heavy. I want to be alone in my apartment, but I want to be invited too. I'm always afraid if I turn down one invitation I'll never be invited again. So I do a lot of things I don't want to do, in the hopes that later when I do want to do them they will still be there to do.

There is nothing that excites me, nothing. I want to look forward to something, anything, but my soul is intensely bored and apathetic. All it wants is oblivion. The circle of days just keeps going on and on and on and I want to get off. I want to quit. One day I will refuse to keep it up, this facade, this treadmill, this rat race. One day I will not get up in the morning. People can't make you live life. They can yell and threaten and push and drag, but they can't make you open your eyes, they can't make you will yourself to live, they can't make you continue to do all that is socially required to be acceptable, like speaking, eating, walking, and moving. They can't uncurl you from your ball. They can't inject you with a passion for life. They can't pump the pain from your head. They just can't.

You don't have to commit suicide to stop living. You can go right on breathing, while being dead. You just stop moving, stop responding, and what do they do? Tubes, liquids, drugs. Reasoning, yelling, consultations. And finally institutions and shocks and restraints.

I could go there, so easily. Sometimes I can't even see the film of separation between me and a madness driven by defeat. I can't take care of myself. It's dawning on me, slowly, as I tread water here. No matter how hard I try, I'm not keeping up. I'm just not cutting it. The will inside me that has always forced me on is weakening, despite my outward bravado. I don't want to go on. I don't want to get up tomorrow and survive three church services and bell practice. And not only do I not want to, but I don't think I can.

I will snap someday. I will snap. I just want to be alone when I do. I don't want to take any piece of the world along with me. I don't want to hurt anyone but myself.

This is a cry for help, I just don't know what kind of help I need. This is a cry for sanity, for safety, for a world that stops rocking.

For a life.