I once hunted myself, like a skilled assassin. I tracked, trailed and stalked with allegations of dysfunctional worthlessness, with the brilliance and proficiency of a master educated in professional loathing.
I ached from my heart with a sharp bitterness. Profound and exquisite in its consuming eagerness to abolish and eradicate—extinguish even—the spark that vigilantly clutched the fragment of life that survived within me. A morsel of torment, an affliction of truth.
I covered mirrors with linen—a cascade of contempt—the bane of my existence.
I am reprinted. Typed single space. No punctuation. Incomprehensible. Gibberish. A book I cannot read.
Booze and pills—all the colors of the rainbow—I clench in each hand like a friend you don’t want to let go. A deadness, bleak and frigid—a blizzard in my mind—a whiteout obscuring reality cloaks me with a desire for dissolution. A hiatus from life.
I toss them back—one chasing the other—a race for a reprieve. A pardon. An acquittal. A blackout in my mind—a concealment of misery—a recession of anguish.
This repeats like days are stitched together with minutes.
In time.
Everything changes.
I had to learn to live.
My feelings cannot hurt me, I welcome them like the breath I breathe, the sights I see, and the people I love.
What happened to me happened. I cannot change it. I can accept it, and hold my abusers accountable.
I can stop hating myself. I can learn to love myself—if only for that kid I used to be.
For her—I will.
This opening paragraph — just WOW!
From there, this piece pulls me in, like an ocean wave, drags me to the dark bottom...
to unexpectedly turn around and sweep me back to the shoreline.
Just magnificent how you have built this scene, which holds so much, a whole lifetime of trauma, in such few lines. Even the format is a wave. Brilliant.
Reading this thread hurts so much. Your pain comes through. The ink on the page is mixed with blood and tears, yours and the readers. I am sorry you are so good at writing this because that means you have lived this.