I am so capable at hurting myself.
So good at doing it before someone else has a chance.
So good at cutting and running.
Ducking and dodging before anyone can touch me.
Holding up stone walls, and moats, and barbed wire
plastering my outsides with signs that read
Danger. High Voltage.
Beware of Dog. No trespassing.
There are ways in, but they are small and secret
and I don’t hand out any maps.
I can’t tell you, that the last person who hurt me
was my mother.
That the one and only time she ever hit me
hurt worse than my father breaking
me against the wall.
That her silence, was a truckload
of rusted scrap. I picked it up, and before
I could be picked apart, I fashioned armor.
Welded the seams together tightly, filled them with
lead to keep me grounded.
I don’t know how many times, I watched her
and wanted to speak, wanted to ask
if she still loved me, at all. If she
remembered who I was.
“Not now. Not now.”
“I can’t deal with you right now.”
From one.
“Cry, and I’ll give you something to cry about.”
“What the hell are you laughing at?”
“What do you think is so fucking funny?”
From the other.
Nothing.
Nothing is funny.
When I knew, what I was. I wanted to tell her.
I wanted her to know, so I would know
if I should be hiding it from the rest
or not.
She couldn’t deal with me then.
I couldn’t speak then.
So I didn’t.
And the next time I wanted to tell her.
I didn’t.
When I should have spoken out.
I didn’t.
When I should have known, not to bring
that guy home. I didn’t.
When I should have stayed at home, and gone to school
I didn’t.
I spent my time doing other things.
Other people. And building walls.
And letting the lawn grow wild and feral,
and full of snaking vines.
What I have are sprockets and gears,
and sharp metal edges
because when I fashioned my armor
I left the spines on the inside.
To cut me, to remind me that I’m easily forgotten.
And I don’t bleed anymore.
My body leaks whiskey, tequila, smoke and delectable white powders.
And I cut my insides on rusted bolts.
And give myself emotional lockjaw.
I poison myself daily.
Because I know that eventually, inside my rusted armor
nothing will be left.
And at the end of the world, when the brush is cut away.
My walls and shields and fences will crumble.
Returned to dust. Blown away on a breath.
That’s what I pray for.
When I’m sitting in a dark confessional.
Please God, Our Father, who art in Heaven.
At some point I’ll be going to sleep.
Please don’t wake me up. Please, let this be the last time
I ever close my eyes. I’m so tired.
I don’t want to wake up again. I don’t want
to see the sunrise another night, when I don’t remember
where I am.
Who, I am.
I pray to never see the sun again.
I follow in the footsteps of great men and
commit slow suicide.
Live on the white front line, as often as I can.
Hoping to be a casualty.
In an office I hear, “You’re killing yourself.”
And I know.
Every day, I die a little more. And thank God
because there’s only so much dying
a person can do before there’s nothing left.
This is from a particularly dark time in my life. I really didn't see any other way out of my life, or any way for things to change.