(no subject)
it's been a long time since you felt this way, so long that you almost forgot you could. you don't miss the feeling but it welcomes you back like an old friend, familiar enough to slip snugly over you like a well-worn glove. luckily, you and this feeling go way back, and when you feel yourself start to get overwhelmed, you at least have your vices (they're no cure for heartache, loneliness or instability, but they do their part and for that you're grateful).
if you had seams they'd be falling apart. if you had gears they'd be bent. if you had self-respect you'd have crushed it, so instead you scream at the strangers parking their car outside of the pizza place, young and happy and you hate them for that, want to tear them apart with your teeth and fingernails because they hurt you without even realizing. you don't even bother wishing for their lives anymore though, because you're so tethered to the one you're living (through therapy, medication, alcohol, and tears you've bound yourself, convincing yourself that to give up is to lose everything, so you keep pressing your heart up against that electric bar until it sizzles and cooks and dies like a soulless piece of meat). so you hate them from afar and wish for car accidents and no seatbelts, drive home shaking and angry and desperate for a slice through your skin or a needle to your veins or anything, anything, anything to make your heartbeat a little less deafening.
you settle for cigarettes. no matter how much you romanticize them you will never love them the way you think you do. they taste awful and leave a horrible burning sensation in your chest. they destroy your voice and you can almost feel the tar accumulating in your lungs like in those pictures they showed you in health class. when you inhale you hear every bad public service announcement you've ever heard, and despair a little over wasted tax dollars as you slowly give yourself cancer. but you suppose your dislike for them is part of the whole package-- they taste like shit, dead and ashy, the way you think your heart might taste. they destroy the only part of you that anyone ever appreciated but you have no one to share it with now so what does that matter? poetic, you think, that they hurt you in silent, hidden ways, so much quieter than pills and less messy than a blade.
so you sit on the asphalt and smoke until your throat feels like dried sandpaper, letting the chill of rainwater seep through your pants and slowly, so very fucking slowly destroy yourself in the only way you think you're allowed. every creature on this earth dies alone, and you have no one to share your happiness with.
you miss the person you tried to carve yourself to be, but this-- the taste of cigarettes and the weight of a shadow in your lung-- is all you really are, deep down. you can't love the lie any more than you can love the dream that died, so you give them both up and burn them down (you want to see everything you love in ashes but you never know why, you just feel the itch to scratch the match, inhale the smoke and bathe yourself in the ashes of everything you'll never have).
you breathe and hurt and destroy and no matter how you look at it you never stop seeing it as a gift.
if you had seams they'd be falling apart. if you had gears they'd be bent. if you had self-respect you'd have crushed it, so instead you scream at the strangers parking their car outside of the pizza place, young and happy and you hate them for that, want to tear them apart with your teeth and fingernails because they hurt you without even realizing. you don't even bother wishing for their lives anymore though, because you're so tethered to the one you're living (through therapy, medication, alcohol, and tears you've bound yourself, convincing yourself that to give up is to lose everything, so you keep pressing your heart up against that electric bar until it sizzles and cooks and dies like a soulless piece of meat). so you hate them from afar and wish for car accidents and no seatbelts, drive home shaking and angry and desperate for a slice through your skin or a needle to your veins or anything, anything, anything to make your heartbeat a little less deafening.
you settle for cigarettes. no matter how much you romanticize them you will never love them the way you think you do. they taste awful and leave a horrible burning sensation in your chest. they destroy your voice and you can almost feel the tar accumulating in your lungs like in those pictures they showed you in health class. when you inhale you hear every bad public service announcement you've ever heard, and despair a little over wasted tax dollars as you slowly give yourself cancer. but you suppose your dislike for them is part of the whole package-- they taste like shit, dead and ashy, the way you think your heart might taste. they destroy the only part of you that anyone ever appreciated but you have no one to share it with now so what does that matter? poetic, you think, that they hurt you in silent, hidden ways, so much quieter than pills and less messy than a blade.
so you sit on the asphalt and smoke until your throat feels like dried sandpaper, letting the chill of rainwater seep through your pants and slowly, so very fucking slowly destroy yourself in the only way you think you're allowed. every creature on this earth dies alone, and you have no one to share your happiness with.
you miss the person you tried to carve yourself to be, but this-- the taste of cigarettes and the weight of a shadow in your lung-- is all you really are, deep down. you can't love the lie any more than you can love the dream that died, so you give them both up and burn them down (you want to see everything you love in ashes but you never know why, you just feel the itch to scratch the match, inhale the smoke and bathe yourself in the ashes of everything you'll never have).
you breathe and hurt and destroy and no matter how you look at it you never stop seeing it as a gift.