I
wrote the piece below in April of 1995.
I am posting it today because it still defines my existence. The writing is about how it is so hard to be
hopeful because there is always something to strip me of that comfort.
I
concede today I choose to live my days clouded with negativity, but Therapist does
not understand why I refuse to give in to the fallacy of hope and positive
thinking. I’ve been in places before
where I felt hopeful, optimistic, and encouraged, but I am ALWAYS, sooner or later,
brought back to where I was born: into negativity, failure, and the drive to
die. The roller coaster ride takes too
much out of me, and I need to remain where I am safest: dead. I refuse to play the silly game of pretending
I can handle life and then plummeting into misery when I am proven wrong. It’s for my own protection. It was back in 1995, and it still is today.
Drops
of salt water are
Purged
from shallow, dim sockets
Where
the windows of life have closed
Their
grave blinds and solemn curtains.
The
myth of happiness is exposed,
Rotted,
decayed, corroded:
Infested
with maggots of agony surfeiting and gorging
On
the generous failures of its host.
The
charade of myself:
Successful,
intelligent, creative
Crumbles,
disintegrates, putrefies
Underneath
brutal microscopic inspection.
The
illusion of hope, the facade of faith,
Beckons
and pleads for my desolated soul to trust,
Taunting
and mocking every ache, every pang.
Invading
despondence with
Bedeviling
strength and determination,
Demanding
the impending and imminent spiral descent
More
dangerous and inclement.
Face
down in despair, life becomes a bleached white hell.
A
flaming bouquet of numbing, frosty torment
Searing,
searing, searing
My
thickly charred crust till I can no longer pretend it doesn’t hurt.
Pain
echoes out of the abyss,
Convening
the proprietor of suicide
Who
compassionately erases the color of misery from us sufferers of life,
And
holds out the only comfort that hoards
NO
illusion, NO myth, NO charade:
The
warm, blue peace of death.
