Do you ever...

Do you ever get caught in the pain?

It flies around in your head endlessly. Sometimes it is barely noticeable; you might even swear it is gone and reassure everyone that loves you that you are all better. Life returns to normal, if there is such a thing. You move on, if that is possible. You are happy, if that was not a lie. Then you wake up and it is back in full force; consuming your entire life, your entire identity.

What changed? Was it you? Was it life? Was it the darkness that now, once again, pulls you down in flames?

Do you ever get lost in yourself?

Unsure and questioning. Wondering if you are who you think you are, or wish you would be. Wondering if the life you call your own really belongs to you at all; if you have any control over it; if you can get anything out of it. Externally you project a person who knows who they are, and fights for every piece with all their power. But inside there is no certainty, no control, no knowledge at all about who you are.

Do you ever lie to save yourself? To love yourself? To be yourself?

The lie becomes you. Controls you. Is you. You are smart, and logical, and you keep everything perfectly organized. Each lie processed and controlled and sent out, without any flaw, to the right person at the right time. You never get caught; not about the important things; not about the things you actually want to stay hidden. An expert of "spin" you could say. Things go the way you want, because you make it that way. Is there sincerity?

Do you ever sit in the dark, lost in the song that is on repeat in your head, and pray for it to take you away from everything?

Do you ever isolate yourself, saying that it is for protection, but knowing all along that it is self-destruction in its utmost form?

Do you ever feel empty and forgotten? Cry when there is no communication for days, weeks, months? Fall further knowing that you give no signs as to your pain; make no efforts as to ask for help; show no love for those closest to your heart?

Do you ever wish, pray, and beg to be something or someone you are not? When you know that the person you wish to be is impossible?

Do you ever feel this? Love them?Mean that? But say this? Control life? Lose? Win? Die? Live?

Do you?

The Bottom & the Falsehood of Such.

It is a common saying that "you have to hit rock-bottom before you can recover" or "know the darkness before you can see the light."

I understand where this comes from. I believe it now.

You can fake it. Fake the emotion. Fake the pain. The world may never even know. But everyone has a different rock-bottom; a different set of things that will bring them down; a different set of failures and mistakes. You need to reach it if you are to overcome it.

As for me, well, the jury is out on that one. Who knows if there is farther for me to fall? Who knows if I can get past it? What I need to get past it? Or if I even know of it yet?

All I know is this: the pain and the low I am in now are anything but fake.

I can fake anything. Any emotion that I want you to see is the one you will see. If only you knew how fake it all is. How fake most things I do, say... feel are. Falsehoods are extreme when you have to look back on your life to notice them. You get so caught up in the lie you are living, the fake pain or happiness you are projecting on the world that it almost becomes your life. It almost becomes you.

Sometimes I lay in bed at night and try to count and keep track of all the personas I have created. Some are for good reason, some are for protection or happiness or love. Others I look at, and no matter how hard I try I cannot find a reason for them. A purpose for them being there. And yet I uphold them without so much as a flinch.

Perhaps it is Karma? I wouldn't classify myself as a necessarily bad person. On the contrary, the main victim of everything I do is me. But I am still a liar. I am fake.

It is easy to fake oppression, hate, strength, and fear when you have none. Why I did this? I do not know. It is all different when you have them. When they appear and never leave your thoughts. When they constantly and forever darken your horizon. When they control your life.

It is easy to be strong when the only things your strength is fighting are in your mind.

This is not easy.

Ruin

Life in ruin. I am in a dark place right now. Perhaps darker than ever before. I have been fighting the pull of my life being in shambles. Truthfully, that is a comforting thought. It is not supposed to be and on the surface it affects me conversely. But I always seem to return to a life in "ruin." So it must impart some pleasure, or at least some need.

In the end, it is my ruin to call. It is mine to create, mine to control, mine to fix. My ruin is my life at the moment. And this is not a bad thing.

Loss & Abandonment

"Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye old friend; I can't make you stay. I can't spend another ten years wishing you would anyway.... You won't see me anymore."

Useless Desires by Patty Griffin