chasmic

asthma

I keep having bad dreams. It's the same nonsensical guilt gnawing at me, reshaping itself into the new people, new places, new situations.

Where can I run to? I can't run fast enough, even when I'm awake. The thought of it alone makes me wheeze in panic. I can't escape myself, no matter how much I want.

I need to get away.
To get away from my misgivings, my insecurities, my self-doubt, my self-loathing, my social anxiety, my introversion, my antisociality, my in-my-head monologues that I mouth to myself even in public

People keep giving me weird looks, like they know that something is wrong with me, and I know that they're right. I don't think I'll ever be okay. No matter how great things should be around me—that brief spat in college was a miraculous, short-lived reprieve that still turned sour—I can't seem to locate what I'm looking for. Even when I think I have it, I lose it soon anyway. No matter how hard I try to hold on, this thing-that-I'm-looking-for starts to pull away.

I'm okay for only a short while.

It seems like I have an expiration date tattooed on the back of my neck, or some other place that I can't see but everyone else can. People usually know the perfect time to let go, to let me fall back into my abyss. Others, still, keep the milk well past the point of spoiling, and regret their decision. Am I really comparing myself to spoilt milk? Yeah.

Sometimes, I feel bad about my status as less than human. In the beginning, I optimistically saw myself as a background character, one with no lines only existing to add dimension to empty scenes. I wish I could be that significant! That would be beautiful.

See, before I was so ungrateful for what I had. But now I realize that I had so much more than I should have. I had ghost friends and dead relatives. Even better, I had this well-imagined discipline that got me through school and work and the gym. I got out of bed every single day because I knew I had to. Now I can't really find my reason. I can't find my ghost friends and my dead relatives are starting to rot.

I'm trying to pretend I have purpose by laying here and writing this. But I know I'm only postponing the inevitable. I'm just killing time.

I'm waiting for something to happen. I could fall from the sky. Get hit by a bus. Die of an asthma attack. I could have a heart attack. I could drown in a tub.

To blink quietly out of existence is the only relief that I can look forward to at this point because it's not possible for anything else to change. Not really. Do you see what I mean? No matter how hard I run, I can't seem to run fast enough. I can't outrun my inadequacy as a person. As a friend, as a babysitter, as an adult. There's always something, and I'm wheezing now because I'm so tired of hearing about it from other people. From myself.

It's the same thing everyday and nothing ever changes. Even my complaining never changes. Please excuse my remonstrations.

Let's think optimistically for a second: maybe one day, I could meet a guy, get married, have kids, go to church every Sunday, take a few dancing and fighting classes, all on top of an amazing job. Ha. That's so cute! I'm sorry, I can't help but laugh. I can't even maintain a friendship, let alone an entire family. That's a pipe dream, and I really don't see me getting there. I can't even see tomorrow at any given point, even when I really want. I need my imagination back because it keeps me going, it seems.