Post-mortem Misery

“the fire came and went
took everything away
the bruises never heal
i tried to take a breath
to say what wasn’t said
but there is nothing left of me, no
there is nothing left
i wanna believe in someone
i wanna believe in something
i wanna believe that i can love again…”
-Innerpartysystem

I don’t think I can possible adequately articulate how dead I am.  I think a part of that is because I cannot clearly define the moment when my heart stopped beating, when I turned from this naïve, innocent child into the insignificant undead.  There’s not one defining moment where I can stop the tape and say, “Yes!  This is what happened and where it happened and how it happened.  This is where I died and I am justifiably angry about it.  Can’t you see that I have every right to be angry, to be hurt and bruised?”  Maybe it would have been easier if I had been shot or stabbed, if someone else was to blame for my bloodied body but I think that is a part of the problem.  Either I killed myself or simply gave up, allowed my heart to stop beating, to succumb to this weary world.  Is it possible that I could have jumped from that sixth story balcony instead of simply writing about it?  Could I have overdosed on those anti-depressants the girl two doors down from me sneaked into my room one night after I had sobbed in her car?  It’s a hard option to think about, that I could have done this to myself, that I could be responsible for my own walking death, my own version of hell.  No, it’s easier to blame everyone else, to defend my actions because it’s humiliating to be wrong, to make the wrong choice.  I always hated looking stupid.  And I don’t like to think of myself as being weak but apparently I am.  If I could jump ship so easily over something that so many other people would just brush off, what does that say about my character? 

Maybe I’m just a fragile individual.  Is there anything wrong with that?  Is it a character flaw or is it just a natural and differentiating characteristic?  Is it a weakness or is it something that I have allowed to weaken me?  I suppose I’ve never had a reason to be tough and when I had the chance to develop a thicker skin, I allowed that chance to kill me instead.  Hm, what an epiphany.  This certainly doesn’t help my self-esteem. 

It’s as if I’m walking on electric wires sometimes and every once in a while, one of them will dance around like a charmed snake and strike me and the jolt will make my heart beat for just a second.  And in that flash of pain and light, I see God and good people and it kills me one more time when it all disappears again.  I have these days, these moments when I feel like I’m almost alive again or at least feel the yearning to want to be alive.  I think if I can just beat myself in the chest hard enough, if I can grab hold of one of those wires and keep it close to my heart, it will resume its rhythmic throbbing again, that I’ll somehow find my breath and my lungs will expand and my flesh will close up and I will be alive again, that I will be the boy I once knew, that I will not be disgusted with myself anymore.

But those moments are just like those flashes of electricity, few and far between and lasting only in seconds.  Something always comes along to remind me of my madness.  People and their obnoxious behaviors always send me spiraling back into my misery.  I can say for sure that if no one particular person did me in, a whole lot of individuals at least helped me get to the point of saturation.  Well, I say that but it goes back to blaming other people for my problems.  Yes, people suck but that’s just the way it is.  It’s not like anyone in particular had it out for me.  If one person determined my demise, my anger could be justified but in reality, I just ran into real people, people who were flawed and frustrated like I am.  I suppose I can’t blame other people for being imperfect and I can’t blame them for how they project their imperfections.  I was merely a casualty, caught in the crossfire of cussing and crushed dreams.   

It almost seems too easy to have those flashes of life that sometimes circulate through me.  As down as I feel I am, as far deep in the hole as I feel, how is it possible that I can get glimpses of the light?  Is it possible that I’m not as destroyed as I have led myself to believe or am I simply kidding myself by thinking I’ll ever find humanity again?  It seemed like I found myself a corpse overnight and only a few short months later I’m ready to be resuscitated again.  How does that happen?  Shouldn’t death seem a little bit more permanent or does death itself have an expiration date?  Maybe I’m just mistaken, just feeling residual spasms of life?  I guess it just seems hopeless sometimes, to have fallen so far down and to suddenly feel like life is a distant yet distinct actuality.  It really only leads to more confusion.  What am I?  How can I find my way back to where I was when I don’t know where I am now? Am I in some kind of bi-polar purgatory?  Is hell on the horizon or is this hell, this constant back and forth of frustration and frenzy?  If hell is the slow and steadfast dissimilation of the brain, then I am there, roasting in my own regrets.  Or maybe I’m just mistaken.  Am I really dead at all or did I just put myself into some kind of self-induced coma to cope with my ever-decreasing grasp on reality?

I'm just asleep.  Or crazy.  Or dead.  Or all of the above.

It's as if I'm fighting myself, struggling with whether or not I should give in to this..condition I find myself in or if I should rail against it, to try to break free of these bonds, to fight for breath.  But, if I do, who's to say I won't end up right back here in this stain of existence?  Will whatever killed me the first time around come back for seconds?  I think before I can attempt to come alive again, I have to find out what I've become or what has been revealed of me.  Was that innocence all an act?  Maybe I have not been transformed, just uncovered.  That is a massively scary thought to digest.  I hope to God it's not true, that I wasn't damned from the start.  If I was changed, there's always the possibility of some sort of reversal but if I was always this way, if this is just who I am, there's no turning back.  But when I look at my future and all I see is inky black, I want to turn around, want to sprint from the spotty darkness that draws me in.

I'm at a loss.