I am still just a rat in a cage…”
-Smashing Pumpkins
The heat kicked in shortly after. I was still ice cold on the outside but my lungs were set on fire. To cope, I tried to place blame wherever I could. I went straight to the top and lashed out at God. How could He allow this to happen to me? Was I not good enough? Did I not do enough good things? Was I going to be punished simply because I didn’t go to church enough or read enough chapters from the Bible? Even before I went to college, I had prayed nightly to be saved, prayed that I would find love and friendship and acceptance, not only from people, but from myself as well. And it never happened. Those night prayers went unheard or ignored. This wasn’t a case of the biggest miracles spinning from unanswered prayers. This was a case of outright neglect on His part. At least, that’s what I thought. What a slap in the face of someone who tried so hard to be a good person, tried so hard to do the right thing and always made other people happy. I might not have been the best Christian but I felt like I was still carrying out God’s will. I was still serving people, still loving them and wishing them the best despite their less than stellar behavior toward me. I was still trying to spread a message of hope and love to others. I gave up so much of myself to others only to have them take advantage of my willingness to please. For all of my life, I lived for other people and my reward was dying alone in a bed that wasn’t even mine. Where’s the justice in that? Where is the reimbursement at the end of a life? Where was God when I screamed His name at night? Where were those loving arms that I had heard about so much in church and in the words of believers? They were not holding me up.
What is the point of living a life to serve others only to be refused, abused and ignored by them and then left alone by your creator to die like an insect in the dark corner of a kitchen?
The anger pumped through me, literally turning my stomach. Nausea washed up and out of me and I could feel a rising tension in the area where my stagnant heart was. As the thoughts tore through my brain like rotating razor blades, I worked myself up into a frenzy. I wanted to scream until my vocal cords corroded from the stomach acid I was churning up. I wanted to rip something, someone apart. I had never been a violent person in my life but in my demise, I was all too willing to deal out some death of my own. Why not dole out the same detriment that was dumped on me all of my life? What did it matter anymore how I acted? I saw that I was already damned. What did I have to lose? My life? My salvation? They were already gone. An when those two most precious gifts are gone, you are free to follow the foul feelings that have been previously kept locked away. It’s amazing the thoughts that will pass through your head when you feel you have been stripped from the rules and regulations of the world. You allow yourself to move into the corners of your mind that were once closed off, those tender areas where malicious thoughts marinate. The uncharted path is terrifying. Exhilarating.
There are times when I literally believe I am capable of killing. It’s not the kind of killing that is planned out, the revenge against someone who jilted me or the careful orchestration of evisceration against an ex-lover. It's the kind of killing that comes from snapping, from being pushed toward my breaking point until I break someone's neck. One day, someone will say or do something so infinitesimal that any other person would shrug it off as a mere annoyance but it will be just the push I need to negate any space for reasoning and that rage that has been building inside of me will boil over into me bashing someone's brain in. No need for a gun or knife. Just my bare hands. It feels more fitting, more animalistic and satiating to the primal perversion inside. Just me taking someone's head into my palms and slamming it on the ground with a wet crunch, like splitting open a watermelon. Crack. Splat. Repeating until there's nothing more than a mound of wriggling pulp. Just one more bad word directed toward me, one more dirty look, one more disheveled shirt and I will have no more control over what the anger does, taking over my body and taking it out on someone. And it sickens me because this wasn't me before, this wasn't what I was about before I was transformed into a pale pariah. In life, I had wanted to help people, to save them. Now, there’s a part of me that feels no one is worth saving.
And I blame people for being undeserving of salvation. It's mostly their own fault I have no hope, no tolerance for people anymore. This is not a blanket statement. There are some individuals out there who I believe deserve the best that life can offer. I'm talking about the mean people, the rude liars and selfish thieves. The world itself is so cruel on its own that there's no need for bad people to worm their way in and cause their own havoc. There should be no more room made for such hate and evil and the people who actively incite disorder should be disposed of. It's sad to know how the evil world and the evil people who live in it are in cahoots to cut down the good kids, to turn innocence into apathy, beliefs into broken dreams, hope into heavy laments. And the worst part isn't how the deviants reach people and tear them apart. The worst part is how the deviants break down the good people and build them up to be a part of the population that pollutes others. Recruiting those who ridicule. It's the real life zombie epidemic of emptying people out and converting what's left of them into mindless, heartless bodies that carry on the disease of darkness. And maybe saddest of all is the fact that I'm one of them.
And I blame myself. I'm angry that I wasn't stronger than the people who pulled me down. I'm mad that I wasn't calmer in the face of frustrating circumstances. I'm angry that I focused more on my anguish than my art. I did everything wrong, everything backwards. I took care of everyone else instead of myself. I wanted God to serve me instead of me serving God. I wanted to be a great artist yet stopped drawing. I was depressed about being fat so I ate to quell the crushing weight of body awareness. I am angry because I never found my own joy. I don't think my life was very significant and I'm angry because I was never given the chance to be significant. I mean, I had just finished school and should have began truly living but my life was cut short. I was weak and let everything overwhelm me. The constant heartache was too much for my body to take and it simply gave out. Where was that strength that I should have had, the development of thick skin and confidence in myself to keep me pushing forward? Where was the courage, the persistence, the knowledge?
I’m angry that I’m dead but I’m more angry that I never truly lived. I never felt romantic love and barely felt familial love from my parents. I never loved myself. I've only kissed one person. I never spooned with anyone. I wasn’t touched, hugged, caressed enough. I never explored the country or the body of a woman. I never lost all the weight and gained all the confidence it would take to be socially accepted. I never did the things I dreamed of, the small wants and the big needs. I was a victim of my small town's limitations and never utilized the opportunity I had when I finally escaped. I was too busy breaking down.
I’m most angry about the fact that I never did anything about those dreams and desires. I just kept wallowing in my own waste hoping that one day things would change. I never took the initiative, always hoping God or someone special would intervene. No one ever did. And now I'm in this in between deadness and I suppose nothing matters anymore. I've never had an effect on anyone and as I move toward a more permanent death, I guess I never will. The anger flows through my veins and comes out in hot waves but what does anyone care? I am not new or unique. No one will bother with me because they have their own problems. I'm not the first unsatisfied customer. I'm not the first failure at life. I'm not the first dead guy. So, my anger will never be heard, felt or acknowledged, only added to the giant sea of self-pity that I now drown in daily, taking my places in the water along with all the other broken and bitter bodies of undead past.
I am here but I am not. I am trapped to the world like insects on fly paper, dead but still attached. I'm withering away on the inside, a pain, a rage so concentrated that it bores a hole into my very existence. I'm just another lifeless loser, a statistic. When I was alive, everyone turned a blind eye to my bruises because they were mending their own wounds. Now, in death, no one has time to mourn me because life builds up while death deteriorates down. And I find myself down here, screaming for someone to save me, to hear me, to understand what I'm going through. I'm not naive in the notion that I am all alone in my pain. As I said, I am not unique. I have not and will never experience a sensation that countless others haven't already endured. But, I am alone in my own way. While pain is universal, it strikes the nerves in everyone just a bit differently, just enough to let us know that our hurt is alienating. And because variety is the spice of death as well as life, hitting us all in its own unique and twisted way, you actually don't understand my pain because you will not die in the way that I did. Death is not the great equalizer. Death is the great divider...
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