Alone

Trigger warning: self harm, abuse.

I write this wishing that my kitchen sink were of a shape and size conducive to me sitting in it. Everything I look at is meaningless in this blur of a room that I live in. I feel that I have exhausted the limits of this space; I want to lie in my bed facing the wall and forget that I have ever had a body.

Please, do not love me. Loving me requires me to exist, to fulfill expectations. Noticing positive qualities in me requires me not only to continue to be/do those things but also, ideally, to improve myself. I feel instead as though I am sliding backwards on a plateau toward a very steep drop-off and whenever anyone says anything I slide faster. I have no control over how I am perceived, not even online.

I have needed to cry for several weeks. The tears, when they come, are never enough. Last night I curled over and into myself, shaking with great loud sobs, and two minutes later I couldn’t cry any more.

I can’t ask for help from anyone. I can’t even accept it when they offer it. I feel guilty about the possibility of someone using their energy to care for me — surely they have other things they need to be doing or would rather be doing — and I feel guilty for not letting them in. I pull my covers over my head. My face is blank, expressionless. I close my eyes and see nothing.

I can’t help anyone else when I’m like this, either.

Now I cry silently, rocking back and forth. Shaking my hands because I need to do something with them but there is nothing I can do to fill the emptiness.

I sniff. It is the loudest thing I have heard all day.

I am deserving of love; it is simply that I do not want it. I don’t trust it. Knowing my selfishness, knowing that people think I’m a good person when all I am is someone who tries and fails most of the time, I can’t trust anyone who loves me because none of them see my reality; all they see is the veneer. My judgement is not infallible and love further clouds it. I don’t know if any of this makes sense. I am crying, slowly, soundlessly, tears slipping when I blink and leaving slim salty stinging tracks from the corners of my eyes down my cheeks to my jawline, where they pool until they have unionised enough to fall. (Maybe the demons Fell from Heaven because they were protesting their working conditions. I can definitely see Good Omens’ Archangel Gabriel being opposed to unions.)

If I am loved, I will be hurt; it is only a matter of time. If I love, I will hurt; I repeatedly prove myself to be not enough.

I drink some water to replace the tears I lost. The lenses of my glasses are stained; I will clean them soon. Not until I’ve finished crying.

I need something to hurt, to bleed, to shake me out of this. I will hurt the people I love if I harm myself; I will hurt them if I don’t. I find myself wanting the fear, the anticipation of being hit, anything other than these thoughts turning themselves over and over and preventing me from doing anything or letting anyone else do anything.

I need to be able to spend time with people without sound, without words, without expectations. I need some way of expressing this pain that isn’t art. I need to be loved in silence, in the arms of someone(s) I trust, at least temporarily, not to hurt me. I don’t know how to heal anymore; all of my coping mechanisms were built around a life where being in physical spaces with people was the majority of what I did, and I’d been building those for 23 years (most of the work happened in the past 2-3 years though). I feel alone even when I’m on a conference call with family or friends or colleagues. I have been working to feel less alone around other people for my whole adult life and that work has been taken from me.

Yes, I know that I write beautifully. I’m tired of hearing that. That’s what people say when the pain they read about is too much for them to handle. (Some people also say it sincerely, but those people have already said it to me more than enough times.) There is no way for you to help. I am alone.