I wrote this a little while ago but never got up the nerve to post it. Something about it is oddly intimate, but it's been sitting here in my pocket.
There is beauty in the darkness. It’s in the ache of a slow burn, the chills I get when I drink, the brokenness I can feel when I play a song and kill the lights.
I am not a prisoner to my past. I get down (for reasons I can’t explain), morose even, but I enjoy my life, wouldn’t want to leave it. In my past, I’ve scared myself with the things I was willing and wanting to do- to go from watching a sunset to wanting to claw into myself, tear into my skin. To the desperation that wrecks and weeps and ruins, and the pain that began to taste sweet where it once tasted bitter. But I’ve gotten better- I know I have.
I wrote about it before:
"I put myself in a box, torn between wanting a rescue and wanting to slam the door. The perfume, the lipstick, the crisp dresses were all just wallpaper over rotting walls, flimsy barricades against the shame and disgust that I harbored for myself. I waited for the stains to seep through , for everyone to see and be horrified. The anticipation of that moment coiled deep inside, whispering fear and regret and grief."
I’m not a prisoner to my stupid habit- if it could even be called a habit. It’s just a quiet whisper. I think, more than anything, I miss the intensity of it. Of having my own secret, my own little bit of danger. I’ve expended a lot of energy chasing new things— music, liquor, going out, staying in— chasing the adrenaline. I want to hold my soul in my hands, feel it all. I feel like I’m mad, and often. I feel like I have to filter myself because I’m talking too much, too quickly, about things that aren’t suitable. I feel creepy and weird and alone and dark, much too dark.
I’ve been gifted a life of good things. My family and I are close; I have good friends. I had a decent upbringing, and I have support all around me. My overwhelming gratitude for the placid waters of my existence keeps me pretty upbeat. If you meet me, I’m a happy girl. Cheerful, goofy, self-deprecating, sometimes quiet. I’m weird and chipper and awkward and always laughing, being praised for my cheerfulness, my ability to make others forget. I cherish that, thrive on it, and then as soon as I can extricate myself from the people, the surroundings, I slip into my quiet sadness, into my darker thoughts. Because I fantasize about darkness, of cold black water, driving too fast towards it. Of setting myself on fire. Of medieval torture methods, of what I could last through. Of what is worth suffering for, worth dying for. I think about long, haggard fingers tearing the flesh from my bones, of gasoline and fire.. so I drown it out- I turn up the radio, open a book, tell myself to shut up.
I think about God a lot. Of the idea of an omnipresent force, a being that is invested in a person through every bit of his/her life, of being basked in warm light, in love, and having a certainty of happiness and glory after this life. I used to chase that, but my disillusionment with a lot of religion has shaped me into quite the cynic. I want to believe in that sort of joy, but in the darkness of humanity and the bleakness that I see— hell, the raw and ugly things that wiggle through my mind… I just cannot.
I think about sorrow and pain and agony. I read my tarot and look for meaning in the words written by other men. I call out for a ghost to kiss me or kill me or tell me something, and then when nothing happens, I pick at my nails and wonder if perhaps I am crazy after all. If my foolish habit from before was just the gateway drug into insanity. I wonder what would’ve happened had I kept my danger to myself.
