Imagine wanting to be gone this much.

I just want you to hold me. Last week marked thirteen years since I had seen you. It never leaves my mind.

I don't feel like I belong fucking anywhere. What's the point.

Accepting inadequacy. You probably won’t ever be good enough. Bukowski’s epitaph read “Don’t try.” I don't think I really do anymore.

i used to not feel anything at all 

and then i did, too much 

just someone else to hide 

in my mausoleum of personalities 

i cry not because of happiness 

or sadness or pain or pity 

when i feel so disconnected 

it sort of all just feels the same 

anyway 

i feel an affinity most with people 

who are long

long 

gone 

whose words are permanently 

sewn in cross stitch 

in my head 

like glorified bible verses 

and strings of rosary beads 

entrenched beliefs and high school reveries 

this century 

they say 

we're living the dream
and aren't we.

i am unchartered territory, characterized by deep sighs and alibi's.
i am a little version of him she says, well those arent lies.
i am the wind pouring through your window at night
and i am clinically something that doesn't sound right.
i am my name on the broken street sign,
and you said it would be better in time well fuck lying
and fuck time, they say we don't get enough
spend time bleeding my lungs dry with every cough.
and when i write it's nothing like iambic pentameter
like Shakespeare, rattling out riddles under so much pressure
now my mum says she's sorry
but i don't have to worry because i am so annoying and she'll cut me out by morning
again.
and everyday i hear of something new that i lack
and everytime i breathe i feel my fucking bones crack. if that.

i live in fear of doing something wrong by someone anyone and therefore mainly keep to myself until my head caves in with thoughts that have been relentlessly repressed for however the fuck long. i punish myself daily hoping that i might one day wake up without an inch of contempt towards myself. i'm just lost

The supermarkets are stuffed full of shit,
And I hate how they put all the sweets at the front so everyone impulse buys some fucking sugar bar.
I tend to remember the most mundane things (like lining up in supermarkets)
But I clutch onto them the tightest
Because they're the ones, I remember them best of all.
I remember breaking down like some sort of machine malfunction and you being the only person I could remember.
I'd give up all for even a semblance of what I used to have,
Or the stupid things we used to do like
Watch kids movies or dance in the kitchen
We didn't have much to fight about, but we did.
I listened to the songs you showed me every night for weeks thinking and wondering why I was so stubborn and let my paranoia consume me.
You always yell,
And I would cry like the girl I am
One of the few 'girly' characteristics intrinsic to slash of myself..
I wonder if that even makes sense and anxious that when I've had a few j's I might type jibberish and then people will really know I'm crazy or the extent of my overall ineptness

Sometimes I feel like I'd rather be alone than around people. Granted, it sounds pathetic but I just don't know how to react when people try so hard and I haven't tried that hard in a long time, and it's way overdue but I can't find the time to care anymore. I just sit and squint and fumble awkwardly with my belongings and I can't count the seconds until I'm able to see you again. I'm a little more lost than I thought, you know, as of late.

I often think about my past loves and how I always seemed to think that love is forever but it just seems they don’t want to know me after a certain period of time and I’ve been thinking more and more and wonder why I was made to feel like an exception but now I just feel jaded and unenthusiastic to let myself be absorbed by someone’s life and plucked apart and pieced together and gutted like a fish at the end of it all and I have epiphanies regularly and today mine was that I may aswell get “I come with baggage” tattooed on my forehead so people know what they’re getting into instead of hurriedly concocting an escape plan when shit gets real.

My life in a couple of bags and boxes, walking to the nearest station in the rain as I don't have a buck to catch the bus, completely drenched and forever confused. Sometimes I think I might just throw in the towel. 

I have been realising over time that the past few months and years of my life are archetypal of BPD. I'm sick of it. I find myself saying "just stick with something you stupid fuck" and still I continue to throw away or fuck up or just not realise good things in my life. Because in my mind these things are not what I want. But then I do. And then I don't want anything. I hate this. 

cigarettes that burn for hours
weeks
days
it's not the walls of this house
or those in yours
it's the same things that reside within them 
and even within those.
it all looks so sunny
in reminiscence
the ribbons in my hair
and a ray of glare
shining through
walk in the park?
she said. 


when they all look like you 
well not all
and your smile, that too
just sometimes
its never like in the movies
the much awaited run 
down a pathway
or to the middle of the bridge 
into another's arms
sometimes it's a crowded place
and the sea of people awkwardly shuffle 
around both of you
or it's empty, and hair flails
that sound of jackets ruffling
the rest of that cliche bullshit
that more resembles 
something that might and probably won't happen
i guess though, sometimes 
when you think about it
it's nice. 


maybe
i'll meet you there
when i'm strong 
when communication has changed
and the pattern of your thoughts
although mine remain the same
and you might say
let's go, 
a walk
in the park
again. 

Battered book pages and a familiar harshness in my throat remind me of better times. As I always am and always have been, I am struck numb with the curse of indecisiveness. I wonder quite frequently of how many times I've tried to be a different person and yet have still remained the same; the most confusing part of it all is that this person, this 'same' that I speak of is still not entirely one person altogether, but rather  fragments of a human being with scattered but unyielding attachments to several people I once knew and loved.  I have relentless difficulty attempting to explain this to anyone I've known. In the hope of a similar string of attachments present in someone else's life, I come across some of the most stable and irrevocably stern mindsets I've ever known. I always wish to be so strong. I find this to be a weakness so great that it is unable to be overcome. This pain and love, almost awkward anxiety I seem to experience and base judgements off always seems to go astray. I wish I could believe it gets better or easier but if Bukowski has taught me anything, it is more than inescapable, a force with such strength that even detachment from everything only gives way to living a life unfulfilled and dying a lonely, cumbersome death. 

It's funny how when we're upset we ask to be alone, but is it because we want to be alone or is it because we don't want to be around specific people? Because no matter what they've ever been through I think I'd rather be alone than have them decide the level of seriousness they think this particular episode of sadness is and act accordingly. It's like they use a chart or a 1-10 scale and I don't think I've ever felt like more of a science project, except I don't win anybody anything. Sometimes I like to think that I'm strong because I'm good at pretending to either save face or save someone else being sad or worrying or even to be out of a compromising situation where I feel uncomfortable. Occasionally, I break. But for the most part I try to stay strong, and not in a way that displays or illustrates mental strength but rather a weaker kind of strength, the one that is accumulated through lying about feeling calmer or happier or mentally stable.
As I've finally experienced one I can now say I find mental health institutions to be so sterile and scary and uncomfortable and viciously unlike home but when I am home it feels eerily uncomfortable also, like I'm somehow bound to one place and feeling completely incapacitated to leave, and it grows, this feeling, that I feel like I shouldn't leave the lounge room with my family. Even though I can't put up with the conversation about why I feel that I just don't want to talk or even do anything, I again find myself watching the television and see right through it and be staring blankly. It's getting worse over time and it's strange because I'm told it should be getting better.
I feel myself slowly feeling less and less attached to people close to me and finding it harder to do things expected of a normal relationship or friendship or familial type bond, and I'm slowly questioning myself wondering if it's normal to begin to feel like the feelings I have for everyone I love are slowly fading away, like I can't pinpoint where the sadness ends and where the love for others begins and instead it's sucking not only the little liveliness I have inside of me but also the feelings I have for the people I'm supposed to love and care for. Am I supposed to be frightened? I find that a lot of my previous friendships and relationships and everything I might've ruined with my own feelings of detachment were just small episodes of a larger thing to come. I wonder if I'll wake up one day and feel nothing for anybody I once did.
I have people telling me that I've got things to look forward to and that I'm so much more than I give myself credit for but what happens when I can't tell the difference between an extension of the truth to encourage self worth and the actual truth? What happens when things like that no longer stop me from thinking the way I do, and no longer stop that miserable ball of worthlessness rolling around in my head and stewing upon whether I want to keep believing the things I'm told that keep me from completely giving up?
There's a little voice inside of me that tells me that I'm not the only one experiencing things like this and that other people are too going through the same things and that it could be normal but hidden just as well as I do, so as not to upset those who are trying to make me feel better. I know it's normal to sometimes feel zero feelings of self-worth and absolute hopelessness. But if I'm withdrawing from humans in general physically and slowly and subconsciously moving away from everyone emotionally, when is the line drawn from feelings of teenage hormonal insecurities to actual incapacitating sadness that could grant such an act as suicide? Because I guess I just feel like I'm being told one and the other by several different people and there's nothing more incapacitating than not being able to decipher your own feelings.

she sat curled up in the passenger seat,
her bones cracking as she shifted positions.
the rain were like little gems clustered on the windshield.
she watched them slide down,
and eventually disappear.
she pushed her cheek to the glass,
and it was hardly evident
(her breath perspiring on the window)
the pinnacle of emptiness.
her eyelids fluttered constantly, in worry
well what's wrong? she says
it's nothing, it's just nothing.
but isn't it always just nothing?

Clubbed into dank submission.

She heard the door quietly being pulled closed as she rolled onto her side and faced the wall. Her feet were tucked under the blanket at the end of the bed. Don't do it. Do it. Don't. Do. She clutched her forehead in agony, it was burning a hole through her skull and her contradicting thought pattern was jolting back and forth like an unsteady train. She had felt this building up but had spent so much time repressing it, trying to be normal.

"I haven't seen you smile or heard you laugh for weeks." He said solemnly, as he handed her a cigarette.
She sighed heavily, holding her head in her hands.
"Your mother loves you, you know. She'd give anything for you."
"I...I know." She said with the cigarette mumbling her speech, fumbling around with the lighter. It kept blowing out in the wind. "Is this the way it has to be?"
"Sometimes, yeah. Nothing is the be all and end all, though. You just gotta take one day at a time."

One. Day. At. A. Time.

It is a rather high temperature today, as I lay in front of the fan with an upset stomach. I can hear keys rattle in hands as people walk past the house, excited that the weekend has begun and ecstatic to begin their journey to whatever it is they may be doing. I have not worked for a couple of days now. It tires me, exhausts me, not physically but mentally. It’s so dull, my mind is not gaining anything from it at all. It’s like school all over again, the different teams like classes, the drama over young love, or rather lust, and hanging out til I can have my next cigarette. I didn’t make it to work yesterday, I begun walking up that road and seeing the windows from the building glare in the sun- something told me to leave so I turned around and left. I know I need money to live, but it’s just not doing anything for me. My next paycheck will be sparse, and I will be okay with that. I find myself not caring too much about money, I hardly eat and if I do it’s not good food, just as long as the bills are paid and I have means to travel to and fro.
My housemate just spilled into the room, parading a vase of flowers she had gotten from her office colleagues. I felt comforted that someone else was home, to cheer me up or at the very least keep me company. She left just as quickly, palming me off with a rushed embrace and nervous smile, late for a birthday party. I had been invited too but I just don’t really feel included when I am invited places these days, to be honest I feel completely out of place everywhere I am bar my mother’s house or in a field of trees or flowers or submerged in the ocean, or any body of water. This place, my “home” does not feel like it at all. It feels like I’m in-between houses, like I’ve got a destination to get to after this, that it’s only temporary. My whole life feels like this, actually. It’s painfully empty and harsh. I find that when I’m alone I never smile, I never laugh. I think a lot. I try to read. Try to write. Try to draw. Nothing. My motivation has decreased since my medication has doubled. I’m just numb all the time. I don’t want to be alone. But I’d rather be alone than be around people that can’t grasp the context of this haunting feeling, this entity that seems to encapsulate my mind, my soul, every little inch of my being and slowly my body starts to feel it too. Just emptiness. Is there anything to look forward to?

"Wake up, wake up." I tell myself so often, when my nightmares become too real. My body jolts forward as I gasp for breath, panting in pitch black air. I see myself drowning in a sea of incompetence. I see myself trying to hold onto something that does not exist, my fingertips curled as I claw at the air in front of me. Not some time ago, I had been reveling on the fact my dreams were always so much better than when I was awake. I'd sleep for hours, and feel somewhat despondent upon awakening. Now, I can't be so sure. Asleep, awake, it feels the same. My lungs fill with water as my chest caves in, I'm alive, I can feel it, I can see my breath escape on a cold winter morning. I know what it's like to feel directionless. I feel it every day. Trains rattle like tin cans in the distance. Sometimes I feel your presence around me, above me, within me.  Everything reminds me of you and it is inescapable.

Home.

I can hear the church bells ringing, and the echoing voices of the foreign women next door. I am in an empty room that is slowly beginning to feel like my own. The synonymous buzz from the snores of people scattered across the house rises above the sounds of a morning. There is drops of water falling from the ceiling and into an empty beer jug in the middle of the hallway and a small feline scampers up and down in anticipation to be fed. 

After the funeral I remember flinging flower covered wreaths onto our roof. I didn’t really see the point of it, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to just leave them lying around; withering. My mother was the one who initiated it, her glassy-eyed gaze adamantly advised we followed. And so we did. I hate those wreaths. People attended, and bought them out of respect, I understand. But they attend the funeral, and by the reception they are too tipsy or absentminded to be hurting. They leave their wreaths and muttered sympathies. They go home and find their way into bed, thanking God that it wasn’t them and perhaps they hold their husband or wife a little closer that night. And then it ends. It becomes a forgotten tragedy, a blip in their memory as time passes. But for me, times doesn’t simply go on. There are no memory losses or fading of events through time lapse. They hurt and then they heal. This will never heal. It burns in me day in, day out, it creates a space inside of me in which it will always stay, and become more prevalent when there is a gap in my thoughts or room for more. I have never wished for anything more than I have wished for his presence. I dream, I think, I feel it every day. I knew, I know that this will always hurt. And I don’t need a selection of flowers arranged in a wreath to remind me.

We’re all daughters and sons and brothers and lovers, sinking the same way all in a line. Living in quiet danger, neighbours to strangers quietly dying. We’re all the one’s that got away. There’s unanimous cries of help over the seas every second of every day. Our mothers held us when we were young, now we just wait for our stitches to come undone before we ask any help from someone. Or no one. The sky isn’t falling anymore. I woke up in the middle of nowhere, stumbling about. I fell asleep on the cold ground. I shivered instinctively, and watched the night fall down. The sun wasn’t so kind. Business men walked briskly like spies. Nobody heard me crying. My heart is filled with sorrow for the dying.

He knew nothing of love and she, too much. It often crossed her mind that one day she'd once again experience that incomprehensible excitement that she had come to despise. Other than that, she just felt painstakingly miserable. Half the time she didn't even know why.

Bearded men stood in the train doorways and laughed off their insecurity. Leaned against seats, wet umbrellas dripped dry and were forgotten once the rain stopped. She watched a foreign couple who sat entwined, legs and arms, and muttered about passers by when the train came to a stop. The sound of it moving back and forth before gaining momentum rose over their small talk, as she fiddled with the ring on her finger. She looked up as the open window trapped a new sound on it’s slant, and let it escape again from the confinement of the carriage. The train rattled something awful but after a while, it beccame subtle background noise. Finally, she chose a seat on the crowded train. The air was humid and sticky, much to her dismay. Glad to be sitting down however, as she had noticed how much effort it took her to walk across platforms and up stairs. Another morning full of sighs and time spent wishing she could once again be in bed. The only place she ever felt happy was when she dreamed. It seemed foolish that one could be so preoccupied with the notion of dreaming.

The train was slowly coming to a halt, it seemed there was some sort of delay. Nothing out of the usual. Patiently, the train carriage sat in silence, awaiting a message over the loudspeaker. She was looking down at her shoes, and began the familiar reaction to the crippling anxiety she felt in certain uncomfortable situations- rolling her ankles and listening out for the cracking of her bones. It was so awfully quiet that she worried if the other commuters may hear. Funnily enough even her reaction to situations that provoked nervousness did just that, like a big cycle. She sighed. How pointless the pattern of her thoughts could be.

I have been feeling quite down for the better part of the last couple weeks. Trying to be positive has been working on the outside, people say I'm happier, I'm joyful, I'm me again. I don't feel like me again. I feel like the opposite. I am weighed down with awful thoughts, harboured jealousy, spitefulness, grudges against people, friends, family.. I don't know what is happening to me. I have seemed to do a half-arsed reversal on the way I used to be. Still miserable, yet with a perfectly polished facade of functionality about me. False, false, false, and how easily people buy into it. I'm not a little on edge, I'm over it, way down the bottom floating amongst the rocks, not exactly crushed but certainly making my way. Ever so slowly. I'm just not happy. I tell you, and you tell me to breathe. Be calm. I can't. I don't want to breathe. It's hard when the people you love don't understand what it's like. Has he ever felt so helpless? I always wonder. I can't even put into words what is contributing to said sadness as of 

late. As per usual, it's the same things as it always was, but even more this time. Stupid things which I wish wouldn't bother me so horribly, but are so integral to my being e.g. money- the big one. 

Lately I have been struggling enormously- juggling redundancy, finding a new job, paying bills, my rent, and stressing night after night about how I have to come up with five-hundred dollars to postpone or I lose six-thousand dollars which I had booked non-refundable flights with. I literally find myself tossing and turning at night, I'm deathly tired but I cannot sleep for I become so restless. I can't breathe, I begin to feel my heart pound and I can hear it pump through my chest. I cough, I run my hands through my hair in the roughest manner trying to get a grip on whatever it is that is causing me to be like this. I wriggle around, in a strange type of agony- not physically hurtful, but rather mentally draining and in a way is so very painful. I can't even precisely put into words what is making me feel so empty. I just want what I can't have. My life isn't what I want it to be. I'm never excited. I work, I come home, I watch tv, I sleep. I visit my mother because I feel the only semblance of the life I used to have resides in my old home and even now I can feel it fading away. I don't know who I am anymore. I want my father, I want financial stability, I love my mother and how she raised me but I wish it was easier for her when I was younger, I wish I had opportunities, I wish I had a extended family, I wish I was fit and healthy and skinny, oh how I've wished so long for slender legs and arms, so much that it almost makes me sick to know that I think such shallow things but the desire overrides it all. I just see other people following their dreams and making the best of their time, and what am I doing? Struggling with money, with food, with weight issues, with self-esteem issues, with keeping friends, with missing family, with self-identity. I don't even know.

Shrink.

She always told me these little things, because she thought she knew me best. Truth was, I knew her best. At least, her "type". And I knew it was bullshit. I played along anyway, because sometimes it's best to keep your mouth shut. Or just say what they want to hear.

"So, maybe, not definitely, but possibly.. in some way.." I get it, you can't read mine or anyone's mind. I know you can't guarantee anything. I started watching the clock tick and tock because her ramblings started to become increasingly mundane and tedious to hear. I did my best to look enveloped with thought, when I was really staring at the air vents rotate and push air back and forth. I probably could've done that for the whole session, but I decided to be more observant. It's not like I didn't like her, she was okay, it's just the whole concept of this.. this thing. Digging up my feelings and telling me what they mean. She doesn't know what they mean. Hell, I don't even know what they mean and they are mine for christsake. I humoured her, for no apparent reason. I guess so she felt she was fulfilling her role or whatever. My stomach rumbled. Must've been louder than I thought.

"Someone's hungry!"
"Not really." I said. "My stomach makes such noises, even when I'm not hungry."
"I see, I see.." It was as if she were trying to analyse something about that. Ironic.

I kept glancing around the room, although somehow always managing to look like I was absorbing what she was saying. I guess I had always been good at that. For someone who's supposed to listen so much, she did seem to do an awful lot of talking.

Finally, after almost an hour of her supposedly delving into my subconscious (which was more self-reflection on her end anyway), I mustered up a few words.

"It's all so pointless, isn't it?"
"Excuse me? What is?" She didn't seem to understand. Somehow I would've thought she got this a lot.
"Everything. Everything we do and see and hear and talk about."
"I'm not quite sure I'm following you.." She seemed extremely skeptical. "Do you mean to say you don't think life has a purpose?"
"I can't make that call." Nobody can. I don't know, nobody knows. People think they know. We do all of these things and we don't even know. For enjoyment? Because it's expected of us? But by who? Someone else? We're all in the same boat. We're all skin and bones. We all don't know why we are here.
But.. It was hard to explain this to her. She looked extremely puzzled. I just stopped talking and started picking at the nail polish on my fingertips. I heard the clock tick inbetween the silence that had risen over the small talk.
"Well... I think we should wrap it up for today." 

I left. I walked out of the building, and lit a cigarette as I did so. As I crossed the road I saw a couple lying on the grass, just looking at the sky. They didn't seem to be talking. They seemed to be completely pre-occupied with the vast amount of blue. We don't even think about it anymore, but the world is completely overwhelming. In comparison to what we don't know, what we do know is nothing. All we can do is pretend to be functional and hope that any others in the social order don't notice. Because the world isn't supposed to be overwhelming. We are supposed to act like we know it all, like we've advanced so far and so fast, and we have everything in the palm of our hands. But we don't. We probably never will. We can't get too caught up in everything. As humans, we need to learn how to take things as they come. Don't force, don't hate, don't kill, don't hurt, just live, and live peacefully. Might aswell make the most of our time; our short lived existence is something not to be taken too seriously. For the Earth is just a tiny grain of dust floating around in space. Nothing more, nothing less. Ain't no shrink that'll tell you that.

Like mother like daughter.

Now I think about those days where I used to watch her, sitting at the kitchen table with Erik Satie’s “Trois Gymnopedies” playing through an old cassette tape. Her gaze so glassy-eyed and her expression just completely blank. It was as if she’d been so overwhelmed with grief and sadness that it would deteriorate and she’d be left with nothing but numbness. This haunting blank feeling overtook her, as she sat, and I’d say something to her, and she wouldn’t even move. You’d think she was living in another world for these moments. The days where this happened of course began to become a rarity, as time passed and his absence was not so unbearably evident.

“it’s okay, Mumma.” I’d say, and not ever really understand what it was that pained her so or if it was going to be okay. I watched her rise up from that state, but I did come to see it more than a few times during my years under her roof. And I didn’t understand at all, as I’d been pre-occupied with the sadness that encompasses a child, such as losing an article of clothing or missing my favourite television show. So as I now sit, on my bed surrounded by empty glasses and in clusters of cigarette ash, I can say I know what it feels like. To be drained of energy, of life. To feel completely and utterly exhausted to the point I cannot cry, or shout, or kick or do anything. I just lie here, and think about how I wish to be wrapped in my Father’s arms again but I can’t. Completely consumed. Staring at my ceiling and watching the light fade away around me until it becomes night, that crisp and sharp night-air, so pure and fresh just flowing in from the outside. Listening to Erik Satie. Subdued.