"V.I.L.E."The self chosen label carved in flesh. Scarlet tears weaping from my wounds. I know I'm not supposed to be this way. Against my will, I am fragile anyway. It starts with discomfort. A soul withering disgust with my own existence. Every contact with the world a struggle. Every interaction, inorganic and painful. I don't want to be THIS anymore. I don't want to feel so much, and express so little. Unseen and unheard through every fault of my own. Untouchable, unreachable, unknown. I move slowly, methodically, delicately through the world. Not knowing better, they think me at peace. The apparent serenity of my exterior matched only by the ferocity of the beast that sleeps inside. Fear begs me not wake it. No amount of caution seems enough to keep it at bay, it always stirs. It wakes with ferocity and without warning. Anger, grief, contempt, disgust, self hatred of every flavor seethes from my very pores. The putrid stench of it permeating every thought and action. The more the beast wakes the smaller I become until I am nothing, nothing but the vague awareness of an ancient unmet need. I am afraid to feel, afraid to move, afraid to be. I have hidden myself deep inside, and even as I hide, I cry out to be seen. I have become but a hollow dry husk where a human should be. I feel fake. Soon every conversation becomes meaningless. They ask me how I am."Fine" I say, as the ugly truth burns and withers on my mute tongue. Every missed connection drives me deeper into a despair I don't know how to return from. Hopelessness creeps in. I feel invisible. I smile with the most socially acceptable smile I can muster and bid them well. They go on, content in the knowledge, false as it may be, that we met. I am simultaneously relieved they bought my smile, and horrified they didn't see through it. I feel defective. The longer this goes on, the more I become detached from the world, from myself, from authentic human connection. People reach out to me, but I can not feel them. This only deepens my shame. I should feel it, I would if I was whole. Then the time comes, as it always has, when I can be nothing no longer. Lost in the unquenchable human need to become,I can't hold it in. I can't hold it together. Nothing left inside,I become the beast. Ravenous and impulsive, a bottomless pit of need. Driven now by forces I can not contain, all the fight in me gone, I run headlong into the darkness. I welcome it. I search only for relief, trading my soul to forget for one brief, sweet moment the utter defeat I feel inside. I am weak. Into oblivion I run, unbound. Consequences be damned. I am damned anyway. You can't scare me with Hell,I already live there. Hel Erling7/4/23
