Volume VIII: Inherited Dysfunction

7. Theoretically Suicidal

“I’m worried about you,” she tells me. I look at her in the same nonchalant, uncaring gaze that I always give her. I ignore. I don’t listen. And she keeps talking. And it doesn’t really matter. I’m not here and this isn’t now.

There’s a voice in my head that tells me who and what I am. And more so, why. It tells me times and places. And she’s still talking to me. And I can’t hear her. Is it because I don’t care? Or because she’s done this before? Because this was yesterday? And the day before and the day after? This is the present that is gone and the future that we strive for. The past is dead but it keeps repeating itself. Does it matter? Do I care? Do they truly? Or is it the socially acceptable thing to do? To ask the same things over and over again? Am I supposed to answer? I missed my cue. The voice in my head reminds me. I missed my cue. She’ll keep talking because I didn’t nod quickly enough, didn’t smile wide enough. Fuck. I was supposed to answer that question. She’s still talking and I can’t hear her.

This is now. This is never and forever and always. This does and doesn’t matter. So why stay here? Why breathe? For every life, there’s a death and for each death a life.

Nothing I say here holds any bearing. At all. I’m a liar. A sinner. An addict. To what? To pain, to misery, to attention. To this.

Why wait in my madness, my misery? Why not just end it and stop the pain, stop the voice, stop the screaming and the ever-maddening silence when it’s not there? Why not just make it all go away with a simple gesture. Give the hope, the blessing, the chance, to someone else. Why not, right? They all want it so bad. Everyone wants to live. Let someone else try it. Let them have it. My talent. My potential. My misery.

I’ve had it anymore and I can’t hear it and I don’t care and this doesn’t matter. No matter what I have to answer to somebody; not like anybody wants me to answer to them. I talk to myself because I know that nobody wants to hear the same shit everyday. I know the truth that they won’t tell me but I can read from their eyes, in the analytical gaze that tells me they’re bored and I’m petty.

This is the now and the never that doesn’t die and doesn’t fade and all I have is myself to blame because I purposely dig my own grave because I’m hoping for someone to pull me out before I’m too far gone. But it’s too late and it’s always too late because there’s no hope from the start, there’s no getting out of it this time. I’ve been digging for too long and there’s no outstretched arm this time. And why? Because I made it so.

And why won’t I trash the car? Why won’t I take it with me? Because it sets me free and yet it’s my chain. And yet it’s not. It’s only chained to itself, it moves by its own devices and it’s connected, this metal box and wheels that I claim to drive though it’s really driving me. It stalls to remind me who is in charge and that one day it won’t be there to carry me away. Another reminder of my coming loneliness. Why wait? I could get a good jump start.

An express ticket to Hell.

And what about them? They’d get over it. Sure, they’d cash in for a while. But they’d deal, as everyone ultimately does. How come they have to deal and you don’t? No. How come I can’t deal? Because of the voice.

The screaming in my skull that pounds at the edges and makes me want to scream and let it out and repeat word for word the madness that only I can hear, madness that I’m sure the entire country can hear and know if they stand close enough. But I’m mistaken because they don’t ask questions. Or maybe they don’t ask because they don’t care or maybe because I don’t care. After all, I quit on me first. I was the first to give up on myself.

My ambitions, dreams, everything, thrown to dirt, and I’ll always be here to rot in this Hell and it won’t particularly matter anymore because this is mine and I’ll take it with me and it won’t live on to haunt or harass the innocent. If any innocents remain in times like these where everyone and everything is corrupted, fucked up, or just plain insane. Does it matter anymore anyway? What I do or say?