Insanity

This is insanity. INSANITY. How can someone this unhappy still manage to stay alive? Shouldn't there be a threshold for unhappiness? Wouldn't it be better if our internal organs cease to function once we cross that threshold? Because clearly, there wouldn't be anything else to do once someone's spirit is sapped of hope and the desire to live. There wouldn't be any point.

Look at me. LOOK AT ME. There is nothing here. There is no tunnel, there is no path. There must have been a path once, and I think I have memories walking down that path with pride, with purpose -- but what do I do with ghosts of the past? There is nothing NOW. There is no path NOW.

The ironic thing is, rather than being granted freedom, I am weighed down by feelings of arriving at a dead end. There is no path, but there is no escape either. Bound by the rules of humanity, I am doomed to stay alive and suffer the existence of someone devoid of purpose, of will, of... love. I have no love for life -- life that has done nothing but disappoint, life that has done nothing but measure and judge and leave one wanting. I have no love for life because I have lost the ability to love.

Insane. INSANE that I am kept alive, when there are so many others deserving to live. When there are so many others brimming with dreams and ambition -- and the will and talent to achieve them, but are prevented because of circumstance, because of balance.

Claim beauty, claim vast and unimaginable beauty, all you people who walk with purpose, with reason, with something to hold on to. Claim heaven, claim hell. Everything in your life, you deserve.

It's insane that I am alive, but every minute is an affirmation that it is a life I don't deserve.

Not Good Enough

Somewhere in my body, in my chest maybe, there is nothing. Light never pierces the gloom, air never passes through. Most of the times, it is negligible -- almost natural. There are times, however, when the absence howls -- when the absence becomes defining, rather than incidental. When nothing else shapes me but the absence. "You will never be good enough," it says. And I echo willingly, a lonely psalm to a gospel truth, "I will never be good enough."

How cruel can this world be, teaching us to hope, when all it does is widen the gap between 'can' and 'cannot.' How cruel -- how spiteful! when clouds uncover stars and all we can do is wonder at their light, forever out of reach. How cruel. How disappointing when, as a matter of fact reaching the stars is indeed possible -- as other people have proven -- but not for you.

Hope, they say. I say hope is nothing. Hope is dust. Hope has done naught else but fuel the absence in my chest. Hope -- that burning light, that malignant whisper. It leans into my ear and says, "Not good enough."

You Lovely Bastards

She had seen her brother die with one eye open, one still in a dream. She had said goodbye to her mother and imagined her lonely wait for a train back home to oblivion. A woman of wire had laid herself down, her scream traveling the street, till it fell sideways like a rolling coin starved of momentum. A young man was hung by a rope made of Stalingrad snow. She had watched a bomber pilot die in a metal case. She had seen a Jewish man who had twice given her the most beautiful pages of her life marched to a concentration camp. And at the center of all of it, she saw the Führer shouting his words and passing them around.

Those images were the world, and it stewed in her as she sat with the lovely books and their manicured titles. It brewed in her as she eyed the pages full to the brims of their bellies with paragraphs and words.

You bastards, she thought.

You lovely bastards.

Don't make me happy. Please, don't fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this. Look at my bruises. Look at this graze. Do you see the graze inside me? Do you see it growing before your very eyes, eroding me? I don't want to hope for anything anymore. I don't want to pray that Max is alive and safe. Or Alex Steiner.

Because the world does not deserve them.

Liesel Meminger
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

An Irony of Truth

Every morning when I get to the office, I go to the washroom first. I expect many others do the same, so I take comfort in the fact that this -- among other things I do and contrary to what I make myself out to be -- is normal. I stare at myself in the mirror, making sure I am ready to put on another face for the day, checking for cracks. I lean closer, and yes, I do find a broken off skin here, a dot of regret there, a patch of fear flaking somewhere on my left cheek, but nothing serious -- nothing a well-placed smile can't cover.

But I do not smile. I let the cracks show. I let the spots mar my skin like a wall of histories, like a statement. "THIS," my face says, "is what I have to deal with."

Isn't it ironic how people insist on being true to oneself, but run away when truth stares at them square on the face? The truth is, I am different shades of angry -- from the lower frequency staccato beats of sadness to the thinner, more delicate vibrations of madness. This is how I was and am shaped, no matter the eyes that look at me or what angle I am looked at.

So I gather my things, go to my workstation, and face another day fueled by a specific frequency of anger. The scowl keeps people away, which allows me to work in peace. Frankly, it's exhausting smiling all the time just to please people you don't even like.

And I wonder why I'm single.