Greatest Enemy, Dearest Friend

by fromfiretoashes

Staring into the mirror I see my greatest enemy, my dearest friend, hating every inch of skin, carefully trying to make amends. I hold others like newborn swallows yet do not know how to speak gently to the child beneath my own ribs. I stifle its cries, point out every flaw, tear through flesh with my eyes; I guess that makes me abusive. But words don’t leave bruises and though self loathing hurts, the pain is easier to bear when I know I deserve it. To push myself over the brink so that I might drown and sink to my lowest is somewhat of a comfort. Knowing things can’t get worse and that I couldn’t feel any more hurt than this is the only way to escape. Running is so tiring, my sorrow so alluring; to lie and die with Misery once again is the easiest way to stop feeling.

I think I was made to disappear. I cannot stay in one place too long before I begin to lose all I dare hold dear and fade from the world. It is not that I wish to let go, to die, I simply despise being alive. If I could only cease to exist…how soothing it would be to quietly slip into the night. Living in a dark void sounds rather pleasant; to float in nothingness, rather divine. My bones feel hollow– they echo and ache. This body is made up of odds and ends and expectations, with nothing being truly my own. There is no piece of me I love and yet every inch, I loathe. This heart has never felt the peace of a home. I fear I will never belong to anyone for too long; holding onto a ghost is no easy task, I hear. I try my best to put my demons to sleep so that I might not fear loving deeply, but they escape my grasp and remind me how lovely it is to be lonely. I am fading again.

I had learned how to live with my sorrows– I can feed my demons just long enough to sate their appetite, long enough to hurt just right. Flirting with Misery has made it such an easy lover to run back to when I can no longer fight to keep breathing in life. Being dead inside was the only way I could survive drowning, but now I’m dry and I’ve forgotten how to be alive. My lungs are exhausted, heaving oxygen when they had grown used to water. My body feels heavy on this dry land after floating for years through the trenches of the sea. If only others could see what I see, just how disgusting this rotting embodiment of flaws can be; perhaps then they would realize they do not love me after all. I can hardly withstand being with me, myself, and I. I am the heaviest burden I bear. How could anyone else live with a pile of despair and call it beautiful? How could they sense such a sickness within and proclaim their love? I do not belong amongst the living. I do not belong by anyone’s side. I am an excess burden to bear, I beg you, hold me no longer for your own sake. I would rather tell you the mistake that I am before you waste your time. I’d rather you cast me aside now with pain in your eyes than later with a familiar look of regret and disappointment.