a destroyer's apology
We're all broken, shattered people moving along through unfolding days.
Do days really unfold? Does time fold? Can you take a year and make it smaller, condense it into a heartbeat? Can you unfold a perfect moment and make it last a lifetime?
Maybe.
I tell people that I am cold and distant. And really, I am. I tell people that I exhibit socio/psychopath indicators, so many that it makes me nervous. And really, that's true.
Nature or nurture?
I have to. It is so painful for me to see the affect of the human condition. It breaks my heart if I let myself see who the person is behind every body that walks through my life. I can't humanize them because empathy will drag me down, down, down and I will drown in repercussions of someone elses' misery.
I stay distant. I'm a coward. On so many levels.
I have about a 7 year pattern. I can't process shit very well at all and so I wrap it up and push it down and just ignore it. I used to actually visualize this, every day. I imagined a box of polished hardwood, brass hinges and I would place this and this and this inside, close the lid, and push the whole down, away until eventually it bobs back up, floating in the Styx, and I can't run away anymore.
So right now, I'm pretty much at that 7 year cycle, on the purge & deal with it. Maybe some things are closer to 9 years. It's why I'm writing currently; I don't always write this frequently.
I've been a terrible person and made terrible choices and it's a constant education, how to keep going, keep moving forward. Sometimes choices were made for me and I'm left trying to figure out how I keep limping with this giant scar in my way.
I've battled my demons, a lot of them. I'm not sure I've won, and some days I'm not sure I can keep fighting them.
I read so much on this site, so much of so many people, so many broken souls that show us who in they really are in all of the exquisite agony that comes with existing. I am in awe of these people, I try to emulate that example and write to heal myself, to have some place where I am truly open and honest with who I am and what made me this way.
And yet...I read so much pain, so much damage left on these beautiful ragged souls by women like who I once was. I'm afraid of my capacity to become that person again.
I want to shriek and wail and justify the behavior for every single one of those beautiful ragged souls, for every one who was damaged by an addict, for every one that was collateral damage to a razor blade, for every one who was pulled into the chaotic undertow of such a deep darkness in someone else.
I read their stories, and I read the things these other women did that damaged those who loved them so much, such brutal reverberations and I read the perspective of the one that was hurt and I can't help but become that cruel bitch in every story, the manipulative cutter, the weeping drunk, the senselessly dreamy addict that chose an ocean of oblivion to wash away the unbearable sensation of all of the terrible beauty that comes with being alive.
Because I have been that cruel bitch.
But it wasn't intentional.
I place myself in that role as I read through all of FL's literary giants, and I read the comments full of sympathy about those parades of cruel bitches and I am broadsided with guilt again and again. I want to howl my side of things through the comments and I don't, because it's not right to diminish the experience of someone else by justifying an alternate perspective.
I didn't drink to hurt you. I drank because I was hurting and I didn't know what else to do and not knowing hurt too so I just wanted to be numb for a moment, you know? But as I would disappear into that haze I could see the disgust and disappointment in your eyes and that hurt too because I wanted so badly to be everything you needed and I just. couldn't. take. it. And so I drank more to blur it all out of focus so it didn't hurt as much.
I didn't cut to manipulate you, I cut because every day I wake is like rubbing salt on the wound, insult to injury to unfold this day too and I always just wanted to be numb for a moment. I could say that I cut to remind myself that I feel, I could say that I cut to turn off the feeling because it would numb me for days and the deeper I cut the longer I could count on that numbness and when you don't know how to process this bombardment of every sensation that plagues humanity this all seems plausible. I want to share my hurt at existing just as much as any artist who creates things, I want to apologize for every single failure I've ever become, every scar I've inflicted on you because of my selfish misery, because of my carelessness and it seems like punishing myself with these deep wounds will show you the depth of my sincerity, how I'm so disappointed in myself for not being perfect that I have to punish my own self. And I'm in such incredible torment at the weight of each day that it pushes my head underwater until I can't see how badly I'm hurting you in my frantic attempts to apologize for everything, everything and for that I am desperately, eternally sorry for.
I didn't mean to choose the drugs over you, I truly, truly didn't. Because I value you so incredibly much I won't ever be able to articulate what you mean to me. I just wanted to forget, sometimes, to stop being me in all of these dreadful flaws. I can't ever get over how incredibly short of perfection I fall and it destroys me inside so much I just need a short break. I'm so disgusted at failing my own expectations and you must be so disgusted at me too and that thought hurts so much that I react instinctually, a wounded creature, and I scrabble frantically to make me forget that I disappointed you.
And even this is inadequate, my side of the story, because even though I want my chance on the stand as defendant for every single one of the horrible, cruel, manipulative bitches that I read about in so many places, even though I want to share the other perspective and why we do such terrible things to the people we love and it isn't deliberate, I am disgusted with how selfish it all sounds. How could I be so selfish with my need to escape my own pain that I diminish someone elses'? How could I be so blind in my selfishness that I create such pain for someone else?
How could I let myself destroy other people in my quest to destroy myself?
I'm so sorry, for every one of you. I'm so sorry for every action that me and my kind took that hurt you so much. I am wracked with guilt over this and it makes me so ashamed, so dreadfully ashamed that I am glad we all just hide behind words on a screen because I would not be able to bring myself to look any of you in the eyes, so great is the depth of my shame. And I apologize for all of us, for all of the cruel bitches who shattered who you used to be, who scarred you and destroyed you and forever changed who you could become with our careless, selfish actions. It makes me want to never engage with any one of you an any level because I am so afraid I might be responsible for hurting you again and that thought terrifies me.
I know I can never apologize enough, and I'm sorry for that too.