A Maze of my Flesh (and Living in it)

Why do I resist when the resistance is what’s killing me?

It forces me to clench my fists so hard that I can feel my derepid knuckles crumbling under the weight of what I feel.

It forces me to breathe as if I were a wounded bear, hugging a tree, mere inches from passing.

It forces me to write as if my life depends on it, and yet, I can never make it past the title without inadvertently realizing that I’m fighting myself in a war for apt words. Words that later haunt me, despite being forged from my pen, held by these nimble, shaking fingers.

It forces me to flatten my knuckles against whatever surface is closest, knowing very well that I don’t possess either the strength or mental fortitude to refrain from repeating that.

It forces me to writhe in a world that I create every morning, a world that loses its colour long before the sky’s hue fades from bright to dark.

It forces me to think about all the things I could be, while serving as a not-so-gentle reminder that I’ll never be those things.

It forces me to run until my heart’s beating louder than the endless echoes of wretched thoughts inside my head, until my chest aches from the massive amounts of air I have to inhale so as to drown the toxins inside me.

It forces me to listen to songs that make me feel way worse than I actually feel, accelerating my downfall, a downfall that is always imminent but never remote.

It forces me to cry when there are no tears left to shed, no sobs to incite a possible reaction and no emotions to feel, and yet, I feel all the emotions I don’t want to feel, almost all the time.

It forces me to lash out at the people I love, for it’s seemingly so goddamn important to be nice to those who don’t even care about me.

It forces me to keep my eyes open every time I feel the first traces of sleep barely gracing my eyes. And when I close my eyes, all I see is how I’ve managed to ruin my own life in the wake of my own decisions. Decisions that could’ve defined my life, but ended up creating incoherent paragraphs scattered throughout my existence.

I hate that my head doesn’t feel like my head anymore. I refuse to believe that it’s mine. I do, because I would never do this to myself.

And yet, here I am.