Tagged: self-loathing

Ouroboros

This guilt stains my soul
Like the light of a billion supernovae
In negative;
An ocean of bleach
Won’t shift this blemish.
I could scrub so hard
That I flay the skin from
My pathetic figure
And still it would remain,
Indelible,
Constant,
Unmoving,
A permanent reminder of all the
Failed fresh starts
And empty wells of motivation,
A planet strip-mined to the core
In search of minerals
Long since exhausted.

So why do I still tell myself
“It’ll get better?”
Why do I still insist on
Pushing through,
On finding that which I know to be
Non-existent,
That which I know forever
Taints me irrevocably?

Because it’s all I have left.

You can fuck your Einstein quote,
You can forget your prayers,
I ignore your speeches.
I carry on because I must,
Not in spite of this affliction but
Because of it.
I will keep on scrubbing
Until the skin regrows.
I will keep on mining until
This planet is destroyed,
And then I will find a new one.
None of these starts will be fresh,
But as I haul up the stagnant water
From those wells which reach
To the very centre of the earth,
I shall light a fire
Upon which this life will burn,
And with that fire I shall boil the water,
Purify it,
Consume it,
And those supernovae will coalesce
Into planetary nebulae.

And I will build the universe anew.

Oh it’s you guys again. Great.

I’ve done nothing all day. To many people, doing nothing all day is some sort of achievement. To me, however, doing nothing all day does nothing but fuel my demons and raise their normal grumblings to a deafening scream. Doing nothing all day drags me back down to that awful place I’ve been trying to escape my whole life.

Yesterday I climbed Mount Snowdon with a friend. It’s the second tallest peak in the UK, and it’s a pretty good hike. We drove up on Sunday night and arrived in the foothills around 11:00PM, hastily pitching a tent in a reasonably secluded place on the path leading to the mountain. Wild camping is illegal in England and Wales, as all land is owned, and in order to camp you need permission from the land owner. We figured that what the land owner didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them, and as long as we left no trace, where’s the harm?

That night brought little sleep. The winds were horrendous, and the small wall we’d pitched behind did practically nothing to break the wind. The skies bled all night, lashing water down so hard that the tent rang out with the sound of television tuned to a dead channel. It was certainly warm enough, but by about 5:30 the water had found its way in and the floor was starting to get soaked.

We quickly deconstructed the tent (which wouldn’t fit back into its bag, but to be honest is only really fit for the bin now anyway), and headed back to the carpark to decant what we didn’t need into the boot, and then set off.

View from snowdon

This is the view we had just before we hit the cloud layer

The hike up the mountain was great – the views were less spectacular than they could have been, as the clouds had blown in, and the upper portion of the climb became a trek through mist and fog, while battling the winds which threatened unconvincingly to blow us off the ridges to our deaths. We headed off the track near the summit in order to bag a geocache, and eventually reached the top… where once again the rains began.

The hike back down was a killer. Raging wind, rain which felt like needles in our faces, and seemingly no escape from the relentless cloud cover which was omnipresent. When we finally made it back to the car we were quite ready for a nice hot shower, but there was still a 3 and a half hour journey ahead of us. Still, when I got home, I felt fantastic. It was genuinely the best 24 hours I’ve had in a long time.

So you see, some people might say “don’t beat yourself up over doing nothing today – just look what you did yesterday!”, but when has that ever worked? I look at what I did yesterday at it just makes the gulf between yesterday’s mountain climb and today’s NOTHING AT ALL seem unimaginably vast. I am worthless and my demons won’t stop reminding me.

The only way to fix this is to do something, but my lack of motivation prevents this.

Save me, please.

New Year

Fingers trace lines on near-forgotten face;
Who are you? Were you ever anyone else?
Plumb depths of knowledge forbidden,
Rising up through layers of lies,
Drawn out by the memory of what once was;
Of what will be again.
Desperate cries fall, but deaf ears hear nought.

Fingers trace scars on arms punished
For a thousand perceived transgressions,
Still memories refuse to bleed out
From layers of never-healed wounds
Held in by the knowledge of what once was;
Of what will be again.
Cries become screams, still deaf ears hear nought.

You made your bed, old man.
Now lie in it
Lie in it as you lied throughout your life;
Deception breeds hatred breeds anger breeds shame.
Lie in it then, closed eyes but no sleep,
For the wicked deserve none.
And your atonement shall last an eternity.

Return to the centre; down, down, down

And suddenly, black.
Every door slammed shut at once,
Every broken window boarded up.

And as the light gradually returns,
The bars of my cage are illuminated.
I know them well; I built them, after all.

A glance towards the centre,
Where that yawning chasm opens,
Beckoning me: “This way for freedom.”

As always, I resist,
Pacing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth,
Until I lose sight of the way back, and forth-hence
Swear to never again fall victim to the trap
Which ensnares me, consumes me,

Sucks

Me

Dry.

An empty promise.

Blow out the candles, one, two, three.
Back to black then, and still the rift calls:
“Freedom, freedom.”

Eyes closed.

Mind open.

Into the pit I tumble,
Never knowing how far I will fall.

Or why.