Severed

I feel small and alone.
Previously, a display of fireworks caused my eyes to light, however torturous and horrific the thunderous boom was. Now, the display is dead gray ashes and ugly holes in the ground, the churned up earth sprinkled so delicately in a silent omen. I never wanted to forget all the magnificence of the rainbow illumination of the sky, but now it seems like the staple of my sanity depends on it.

In retrospect, I suppose the brilliance of the aforementioned fireworks display was supposed to signify the ending of all the goodness of my world. It was a fitting ending to all that I have cherished and loved. Once the sparks fizzled out and the sky became just as silent and cold as it had been before, the goodness was over. Dead. Gone.

And so I am, small and alone.

I walked in the park, where the darkness seemed to keep pace with the churning of my thoughts and the blackness of my mood. My walks in this area have always brought me a measure of tranquility and the comfort of singularity. Last night, this was not the case. I had a steady stream of tears dripping off my chin, falling onto the pavement I could barely see. Well-loved songs of self-loathing grief did nothing to improve my mood, and seemed to be more background noise than anything else. I looked from the leafless branches to the midnight blue of the sky, and watched my gasping breaths emerge as puffs of steam, but no solace was found.

I returned, numb hands shoved into my pockets, feeling possibly even worse than I had before I had decided to walk in the dark, in the quiet of the neighborhood. I felt more alone and infinitely more depressed, but there was a biting edge of clarity and starkness to it that made it real. The clarity seemed to absolve the frustrated edge of your words, but did not completely cleanse my mind. Your words sunk their teeth into my frozen flesh and I took the pain with a selfish, self-preserving air.

It wasn’t until after I tried to smother the words and emotions in scalding heat opposed to the frozen, unyielding cold that something steeled inside my heart. No. I wouldn’t feel sorry, I wouldn’t be pathetic, and I wouldn’t let you take the easy way out through self-loathing, which we all know evokes pity and concern above all else. Your self-loathing and bitterness unleashed my empathy, distracting me from the point at hand.

So maybe I was wrong all along. Maybe we have not properly resolved and absolved feelings between us, knowing they’ll take us nowhere other than down dangerous paths. Maybe I’m a fool for giving myself over to you in confidence. But I don’t regret it. As much as the hot pain burns away my humanity, and the blazing anger sends sharp needles into my skin, and the frozen numbness snatches away all endorphins, I don’t regret it. All of those feelings are short-lived in the face of what you are to me, what you do to me. I feel alive. At least I know I am not lying to myself, or you, for that matter. If honesty comes at the price of broken sobs and angry exhales, fogging up the glass with my frustration, I’ll take it. I’ll take it all.

Just don’t leave me. Don’t withdraw from me. I wish you were as brutually honest as I try to be with you, but if that’s not the way you are, then who am I to ask it of you? I wouldn’t change you, as horrible as you believe yourself to be. All these raging feelings remind me that there is still the breath of life in me, the breath of change, the breath of clarity. I am reminded to not give up. But I’ll always give in to you. And it’s amazing how much I crave that…giving in to you completely. I won’t fight you anymore. I don’t care how you think of me. But I will give in to you, and I won’t feel sorry. I am looking for relief against the burning of the fight that I knew from the start I wouldn’t win. I don’t want to win.

I don’t want to lose your passion, matched up perfectly to mine. I won’t promise that I won’t be expectant, because I always end up tricking myself, or, fine, letting you trick me into thinking there could be something there. Something more than fiery, passionate, untamed emotions releasing themselves through the brutality of the unknown, the forgotten, the mischief, the end of sanity. But I’ll take your wits’ end, I’ll take your anger. Take it out on me. Let it burn through me. The only thing I expect is that you’ll restore a measure of sanity through your passion, your anger, your helplessness.

At least then, it’s genuine. It rings truer than any of the beautiful, faniciful words you permeate my brain with. I believe that you can’t fake the emotion that it takes to truly deliver yourself through that medium. I misread your passion for devotion, when in reality it’s a way to escape what you believe yourself to be. At the same time, you’re embodying that primitive feeling to destroy, to deliver yourself, to escape whatever it is you’re running from. I’ll take it. I will take it, no questions asked, because that’s what you need. I’m your friend, and the silliness is draining for the time being. Strike now. Make me forget, and I’ll make you forget. Before it tears both of our sanity to shreds, before the fire consumes us.

I am desperate, hurried, hasty. I want to be passionate. I want to be everything that you see in me. I want to bleed out every raw emotion that has ripped its way through me. I have never felt so primitive, so wild, so completely wrong before. I want to drain myself. I want to make it stop. Please, just make it stop.

And there’s only one way.
I’ll leave that up to your imagination.

Desperately clawing her way out, fighting to breathe,
Amanda