When I was young, maybe 12 or 13, I'd slap myself, sometimes punch or pinch parts of my body. I would stand in front of a mirror with red eyes, tears streaming down my face, because I wanted to know what people saw when I was hurting inside. Most people would see me crying about things they thought I was too young to understand. A kid just doing what all kids do. But what most people didn't see was that I didn't just cry myself to sleep when the days began to take a toll on me. Most people didn't see how much pain I was really in. It was weird, wasn't it? I think it was, to temporarily hurt myself. I would choose bruises because they didn't leave scars. I didn't bleed; my cheeks would stay bright red for a few minutes (at max an hour) or my knee would have a bruise I could blame on gym class. But scars... they were always a difficult thing for me. I never liked the idea of cutting myself although the idea would pop into my mind once or twice. It was an ugly idea, I know, but so are the feelings some of us feel in this world. I don't think anybody really wants to die or hurt themselves. I think that sometimes, in those desperate moments, we tend to see it as our only option. Pain is experienced differently by all of us so I wouldn't call one person's coping method weaker than another's. I, in particular, didn't stop hurting myself in that way until I was 15 or so. I do not know why I stopped. I suppose that life just felt a little bit better. But now, or at least every once in a while, I'm not happy. I haven't been happy in a long time.
Most of the time, I don't care if I live or die. One time I was in a car crash. I was driving and I was distracted enough to not notice the slowing of traffic in front of me and then it happened. Now, ever since I was little I would have this undying fear of death. Not really whether I would go to Heaven or Hell, that part was always a whatever to me. But what I feared most was how I'd go. In that moment, when I completely destroyed my brother's car and all the airbags blew up around me, I didn't care. Even when I could smell and see the smoke in front of me, I didn't care. I didn't want to leave the car because I wanted to see what would happen, a part of me wanted that to be it. Recently, I've realized that what we like to call life is just a temporary human experience we tend to give more value to than it has. I like to think that when we die we go on this permanent acid trip through the ever expanding universe in a state of both conscious and unconsciousness. That's what I think the afterlife is and not salvation or a pit of eternal fire. It is just an emptiness filled with everything yet nothing that we do not realize is there. Or maybe I'm wrong, time will tell.
There is something wrong with me that I constantly try to figure out. I'm not sure where these feelings began so I'll try to figure them as I write. Describing how I feel is difficult. It's like I'm half of everything but not too much of anything. I'm in this middle, like a pendulum swinging from side to side but when you force it to stop it just stays there, unbothered and unmoving. Emotions require a weight to them in order to move forward; without a weight, there's nothing.
I want to believe that things will get better. That I'll one day stop feeling this way and that the torture will just be a memory but I'm not so sure of that yet. I always try to reassure myself that what I feel is temporary but if that were the case then why have I been feeling this way for such a long time? I try to find things that will make it better but I always end up losing those short-term commodities. I like to follow a path of self-destruction where I run after what will hurt me most. I do it because I think that I deserve that pain. I think that maybe if I'm able to hurt myself enough on the inside that I will stop caring altogether and carry on with life as if I were some robot. It won't work; I know it won't. Hurting is a tricky business, that's why I try my best to come at it head first. You see, if I have experience with heartbreak or failure then perhaps I will be able to cure some numbness inside of me. I will cure it with forced emotions of which I am not prepared to experience so that when that disappointment comes again then I will not care and then I might heal the wounds a little bit better. Sure, it doesn't make sense but it makes sense to me.
