Everything Ends.

 

     art by Masahiro Ito

    I have nothing left I feel is worth saying. I oftentimes worry that the well of feelings and the words I have to poorly and spasmodically articulate those feelings has long since dried out. There's nothing left to say, there was never anything to say about myself or what I feel or what I think. Why should there be? Why should there have ever been? What am I to anybody or anything? Nearly every single time I put pen to paper or decided to endure the struggle to actually type something out it only ever feels like an attempt to inflate my woefully nonexistent ego. Like anything rattling around in my tired and, at this point, too old head is worth anyone to know - I'm just fooling myself. My words and my thoughts and my ideas deserve an audience? Permeance and preservation, even? I don't think so. I was not made for an audience. I was never under the belief that anyone out there would even care.  I was not made for anything at all as none of us were and I sometimes just can not convince myself otherwise. 

    I recently (a few days ago) turned 26 years old. Which I'm sure most people would tell me is still young - and I guess it is in the grand scheme of the current life expectancy of the average, "healthy" human being. But I don't feel it. I'm fucking ancient. I have far surpassed the time I thought I would spend on this planet, in this body, with this brain. It has been over twelve years now since I realized that I didn't want to keep living, when I realized suicide is an option and that I have more control over my mortality than I once naively thought. Nonexistence began to call. But here I am. Still here.

     Nonexistence is a concept I have found as a tremendous comfort for myself throughout the past decade or so and I have hoped it would come soon. The desire for it ebbs and flows, sometimes it is too strong to handle and the overwhelming urge to simply not be cripples me. Other times it is so far in the back of my head, either due to a host of genuine distractions or by factors in my life legitimately improving. But it always comes back because it never actually left. It is always and will forever be that nagging desire in the back of my head at the best of times and the overwhelmingly powerful and terrifying call to action at the worst of times. Nothing stays consistent in life, after all, so why even attempt to convince yourself of any single thing that has helped you or is helping you will last? I don't know where to draw the line, exactly. The world and the human beings that populate it is such a disastrously disturbing and irritating thing a lot of the time, and it only ever gets worse. But, really, my life is not that bad. So is it just me? Am I an endless torrent of negativity and pessimism and hate and self-loathing that I will always inevitably drag myself back down into the falsely comforting depths of suicidal ideation? The world effects me, those around me effect me, the tragic, fucked-up, unspeakable traumas and horrors that the innocents of this world are made to unfairly endure effects me to no end, but why does that cause me to want to call an end to everything in my life? Is it selfish? Am I simply feeling the consequences of being unequipped to live this life in this world, or is there something in my brain that is holding a greater power over me? 

    Everything ends so it becomes difficult to feel comforted by the aspects of my life that are positive and good and benefit me. And I lack the ability to see myself as that beneficial to anyone else's life. Nothing feels permanent and it terrifies me as I'm sure it terrifies anyone else. The desire for death comes and goes, and sometimes feels very far away. But things change, certain routines or expectancies of life abruptly end. In the wake of all things ending, changing, altering and morphing around you, nonexistence doesn't just act as a comforting thought - a lovely nothingness awaiting you at some undetermined moment in life - but is now something you actively seek out. Anything to get you there as soon as possible. Anything to cancel out life altogether. Anything to feel and believe that nonexistence is within your feeble grasp. Perhaps just little sensations of such, anyway. A cut here and there to feel the existence slowly seep out of you, then you grow numb to it so the next one is deeper, and the next one is vertical instead of horizontal, and the next one is deep enough and bleeds enough to finally snap life back in to you and actually scare you. But that ends too, and the numbness takes hold, and the next one is worse. 

    There was always something so satisfying, in the beginning, of watching the whole process take shape. Sometimes in was almost in slow motion, like this great tumult of air pressure slowly leaking out of the body. Other times it was so fast I couldn't even register how bad it was until the blood was dripping heavily onto the carpet, my sleeves already stained. I can remember so many of them. Not necessarily what was happening, what I was thinking/feeling, or anything like that - but I can still see it all unfold. Almost in third person - watching myself lacerate myself. I remember the feeling when I would cut into myself, slide the blade down, and it didn't yet bleed. It would be sort of white at first, the layers of skin opening up as I watched it and took the blade away. Then it would flow. The blood would rise up like it was flooding the white laceration and then drip down my arm. And it felt like a tremendous wave of relief came over me. I felt something, I was alive, for an infinitesimally small amount of time the numbness subsided and I felt in control of myself, of my life. But that would end before I could even put the blade down. Either the all-too-familiar numbness would return or I'd be filled with a gripping sense of guilt. So what was there to do other than either cut again or lie down in my bed, my blood pooling and staining my bedsheets and pillow case, and succumb to stillness and numbness and hopefully unconsciousness. And all you're really left with is being alone. But I'm not alone anymore, I don't particularly see myself as being in any of the similar positions or state of mind I was in during those days. But the feeling is still there, the urge to not exist can still come on as strong as ever.  And as much as I detest admitting this, as much as I realize it is deeply unhealthy, and as much as I do not want to ever glorify self-harm or legitimize it in any real way...cutting helped. And I miss it. But as much as it helped in the moment, it just became a hassle. Another thing to be ashamed of, another thing to try to hide from others, another thing to try to mask about yourself, another thing to make myself feel insecure, immature, and utterly incompetent at living life. So why do I feel now that I want to return to it? Why do I feel now that, while I do not want to "kill myself", I just don't want to exist anymore? Is it the fear that all of what I know currently, all that I have become comfortable with, all that I have now to truly comfort me and give me a vague sense of purpose, will too end in time? Probably. Because all things end and become uncontrollably far away. Maybe that's not necessarily true, but it doesn't help me to not feel this way. Rationality has no room here sometimes. The overwhelmingness is just that. 

I don't really even understand what I am going on about. I don't understand why I wrote this all down. But it doesn't matter. No one is going to read this, but by pressing that "publish" button maybe I'll feel expunged of all of these current thoughts. But probably not. 

Nonexistence looms like a guillotine ready to swiftly chop into my noxious, torturous little brain stem. I spend every day feeling more and more like everything here and everything we do is devoid of all meaning and devoid of all life. No matter how well aspects of my life end up being I won't ever not feel like every single thing is slowly (or sometimes rapidly) being swallowed whole by nonexistence. And I'll never not want to be swallowed up by it too. 

Lastly, as these feelings started swirling and churning inside me over the past few days, more strongly than they have in a while, I wrote this little meaningless line down;

"I want to grab the edge of a crescent moon, tear it to pieces, and cut my face with them from ear to ear." 

That's all. I can't even write creatively anymore.