MONSTER

Depression has settled deep inside me. For weeks now, I cannot write, I cannot relate to people. I don’t talk to them unless I am pressed to do so. I usually become abusive. I am violent by nature and at times it becomes hard to control myself. It is at its worst when I am depressed. Depression is with me. I am depression. My soul. A steel plate in my head. A trap door. A drain... Yes, it’s like I am being drained by a huge leech. Rotten parasite, constant companion, along for the ride dragging myself through myself. How long will this one last? When will it release me from its grip? I don’t know. I am convinced that it has nothing to do with me. I avoid people when I’m like this. They always make me feel worse. They look at me and ask what the problem is. My first impulse is to hit the person. I feel my throat tighten. I choke myself. Punishment for being alive.

There’s a dark cloud that hangs over me. I can’t get to it. I am not feeling sorry for myself. I know that there are people that go through this all their lives. I am a product of depression. It is the driving force in my life. I am not creative or smart. I think about killing myself all the time, like a lot of people. Sometimes it makes so much sense that it’s all I can do to hang in there until the cloud passes. At the time it makes pure logical sense, that’s when I rebel against myself and hang on. I torture myself with life. I exercise my body merely to taunt it, to cause it pain and make it hurt. To make it scream.

Basement. Dungeon. A long walk alone—alone everywhere. Alone when I am with them. The stage—a perfect place for me. It is the truest place I know. It causes me pain like I have never experienced anywhere else. It is perverse and disgusting, all things brought to a boil. All is shown, all is known. All is turned inside out for all to see. A freak with all the lights on—sickness. Isolation so heavy that I hate myself into sleep afterwards. They come up to me with their words of praise. It never makes sense to me why anyone would like to see something like that. I’m told that they know what I mean and that they feel the same way sometimes. I feel sorry for them. You can’t know what someone else is feeling. As soon as you let that lie go, the real world opens its ugly jaws and swallows you whole.

Long ago I threw out the idea that the world was against me, trying to undermine all that I was trying to do. I used to think the same thing about life itself. I used to think that life was hunting me down and trying to destroy me. I have found that to be untrue. It’s always the easiest way out, to blame your problems on something else, someone else. I threw out the ideas that the world and life were my enemies. I found that I was protecting myself from the real enemy that I had not yet dealt with—myself. As soon as that was stripped away, I saw things more clearly. I also stopped talking to people and became more withdrawn than usual.

I am a monster. I don’t understand. Too many things cause me pain. I want to get lost. I want to escape myself. I don’t want to battle my mind again. The last time was too heavy. I lost. I want to walk until I disappear into nothing. Where is nowhere? How do I get there? Can I find it in the night? If it’s anywhere, it’s in the night, somewhere in the night. That feeling, like you’re wearing a cloak of darkness. A secret wrapped in a secret, protected from yourself. It’s good to get a break from your life.

I fell into my room. Got away from the streets and the noise. I am looking at the walls. They look good to me right now. Slowly I am forgetting them and their mind-polluting words. I don’t know how to handle praise. I feel like a con man when I stand there and take it from them. I feel like a commercial. I do it all wrong. I don’t know what right is, but I know that I am doing it all wrong.

I love dreamless sleep. Dreams tell me too much. Sometimes the less I know, the better. The more I look, the more I see. Like the time I had my arms around her. I looked at her. I looked in. I tried to stop my eyes. I wanted to stop seeing. It happened like it always happens, I saw through her. I look into myself. I don’t stop when I should. I dissect myself. I see through myself. I expose myself to myself. I don’t like what I see. The less I see, the better. Do you look too deeply? Do you see too much? I have a bad ability. It’s like a curse. I can make anything bad by looking at it too long. I always look too long. I see through love and affection. I see desperation in praise. I see hate and jealousy. I see it in myself. I want to walk in the desert tonight. I want the wind to pass over me. I want to let the poison bleed through the soles of my feet into the desert floor. I want to starve the monster. I want to punish it with thoughts of clean night wind. The monster will kick and bellow. It can’t take a direct shot. It cannot take the pain of painlessness.

The iron door slams shut. A con stares the paint off a wall. There is no next time. There is only a flickering recollection of last time. History is vacant and meaningless. Thoughts of the past bring pain that cannot be measured. Thoughts of tomorrow are nightmares wrapped in reality. He can no longer prove his past. He can no longer prove himself. He throws the shackles away and lands hard in the present. He closes his eyes and opens them again. The wall is still there. He falls deep inside himself. Relentless.

When you’re finally a world away, when you have left them, when the pain and confusion has fallen away... what then? What do you do with the vacancy? What do you do with all the time that you spent hating, wanting what they had, wanting to feel like them? What do you with the hours, with the thoughts? What do you do with the freedom? You learn that you spent a lot of time thinking about them. You were a part of them more than you had ever suspected. You disgust yourself—you weren’t above it after all. You were with them all the time. Speaking the language that you were proud you didn’t know a word of. Vacancy is a vacuum. I feel a duty to fill all the cracks, to shove light into all the dark corners.

The pain eases away, your step gets lighter. You’re so used to the tension, that now life is new and strange again. You let them and the world they rode in on leave, and it’s a new world. Your new world. Welcome to your new world. Your new room, your new reality. You trip and fall a lot. It’s good to fall.

I don’t blame people for the way they make me feel. I used to. It’s good to let them go. I used to cause myself so much pain at their feet. They didn’t know what the hell was going on. There I was, bleeding at their doorstep, pointing my finger at them. Calling them heartbreakers, the dispatchers of despair. It was me all along.

What I know: I can’t relate to them. When I try, I am filled with confusion and pain. I don’t know what to do with words. When I talk, they take on other meanings. I don’t get it right. I let go. Hard at first. Missed the things that made me sick. To have a broken heart, to lose sleep over someone, to feel jealousy, to be amazed at the depths and the lengths that they will go and the places they will take you if you attach to them. Years of my life living for them. Hoping to be lucky enough to be part of the human experience, their world. To dream their nightmares, to be on the team. To spend eternities, lifetimes, deaths, rejecting them over and over yet running back, happy to be given another chance to reject them again.

What a bad bucket of blood. To feel pain and feel good because you know that it’s all yours and finding out that it’s not. You got it from them. You’re merely a tenant, living off their scraps.

My pain defines me. Their pain, when ingested, distorts me. It weakens me, blinds me. I learn nothing. I don’t grow. I run headlong into their jail. That’s over with.

“Look, it’s a monster. He’s walking alone. Look, he’s pulling something out of his pocket. He threw it on the ground. Let’s go see what it is. It’s a black box. You open it... ok... Look, it’s sorrow, misery and pain. It’s loneliness and longing. Boy, he’ll be sorry he lost these.”

I have tried some stupid things in my time. Gone to extremes to try and get away from things in my head that I knew were trying to kill me. Hard to swallow when you see yourself as the enemy. Only you could put yourself through this. I have tried to ignore myself, failing miserably every time.

Have you ever fallen in on yourself? Like you’re the coal mine and the miner? Happens to me all the time. I sit alone after a show. The smell of their cigarette smoke in my hair, a ringing roar in my ears. I look at the floor and I think about them. I have nothing of myself to grab onto. I know better than to hold onto them. I know the mindless stupid pain that attachment brings. Life is hard enough. I remember their faces, telling me what to do. All that heat. Another night, another freakout, another life thrown into the abyss. I look inside—nothing. I wish for a signal to tell me that I am still alive. I wonder why I don’t turn into a pile of salt and fall through the cracks in the floor. I wonder if any of me comes out with all that sweat, like maybe I sweat my brain out up there. I close my eyes and listen. I hear pieces of myself falling and breaking at the bottom. I’m hollow, a shell, a name for someone to call. I hear the black wings of loneliness beating overhead. I see despair coming over, waving and smiling. I send despair packing. I shoot loneliness down and stomp on its frail body. I come back to myself. It takes longer as the years go by. These people don’t realize what they are seeing. They think that they are getting entertained. If they only knew how real all this was, they would be turned off.

Beware the drains. Here they come, smiling, hands outstretched. They want to test your stamina. They will see what you got and how will you stand up to the test. Beware the leeches. Their eyes—they look like they could move in for awhile. They look friendly, like you could get close. Beware the trap. Don’t allow your perception to destroy you. The best intent can tear you to shreds, leave you bloodless, thoughtless, nowhere. You want to attach, to leech off someone for awhile, for a night, for a few lifeless hours. Someone to listen to, doesn’t matter what they’re saying as long as they’re saying it to you. You need to put the bite on someone and hold them for as long as it takes for you to get what you need. Call it whatever you want. Maybe it’s ugly. Well ok, the world is an ugly place. It doesn’t understand anyone’s anything, never did. Where are the leeches tonight? Maybe there’s one in the mirror.

Walking wounded and dazed. Is there anyone alive out there tonight? I hear rain falling. I hear cars passing. I see shapes moving but I can’t be sure. I have a rotten, reoccurring feeling that rips through me. A desperate longing for what I don’t know. I walk, thinking that it might come to me, that I might be able to get my hands around its throat and strangle it. I want to kill it because itwants to kill me. I say kill all the enemies in my brain. The monster stalks the streets in search of itself. Regret, I’ll kill that guy. Despair, shoot him. Loneliness, come forward, I want to disfigure you. I want to turn you on yourself and make you see what you do to people. I want you to see the blood and the anger. I want you to feel the sullen lump that finds itself in my throat when you come in. I want to lock you up in solitary and watch you destroy yourself. I am going to make sure you go as slow as possible. I want you to taste every drop. You’re going to find out what hell is like. You’re going to see that it’s you. To make things as bad as I can, I’m going to give you little breaks from yourself. I’ll give you glasses full of the finest companionship. I’ll get you hooked. Then when all you want is that next shot, I’m going to cut you off and you will be left all alone with yourself. And then you will know what we all know. You will scream like we all scream. You will feel the pain. I don’t know if you’ll be able to survive yourself. That’s a terrifying thought, isn’t it? Well, good, we all go through it. Now it’s your turn... Yeah, well, I can’t find any of those fuckers tonight. I keep walking, I walk the dark streets, the dark thoughts, the dark minds, the dark deaths. I look for a way to get rid of the poison. It seems like I can confront myself all day long but can’t go from there. Confrontation takes little thought. I have always been good at the things that take little thought. Sure you can confront, but what you do next tells you what you are. The human experience can make you every stupid name in the book. I try to not let the human experience make an ass out of me more than three times a day.

Have you ever tried to outrun yourself? Lose yourself in a crowd, hide from yourself in the stall of a bathroom? Take on a new attitude to fool yourself into thinking that you’re someone else? Me too. Same thing every time. At the end, it’s always you holding onto yourself. Out of breath, self-humiliated, hot footed, red handed and hopelessly human.

I find such emptiness in your television shopping mall eyes. If I had a heart to break, I swear you would break it.

How far does one have to go before the pain falls away? I don’t want to shoot myself in the head anymore. I’m tired of that money business. I’m tired of my brain. I want to remove parts—burn parts out. Do you get tired of the language that they speak, the things that they do? Me too. They shove dirt into my thoughts. Can’t wait for the sun to go down today. I can come out at night. I can lose myself at night. Walk and forget. Walk and unload.

I can’t make words work. If I could say the right thing to you, maybe you could tell me what it is that’s killing me. I wouldn’t mind it if you saved me. Some would hold it against you. Turn it on you, try to take all your good and ram it into your guts so hard that the whole world turned black and all you could see was scar tissue. I think of you a lot. You and I walking along in the parking lot at night, our shoulders rubbing against each other as we listen to our voices. We’re both damaged and beautiful. We know the order of order and the order of disorder. We have both been hunted and nearly destroyed by weaklings with big ideas. We know the night. I was hoping that you would turn out to be strong. Stronger than I had ever had thought possible. You would be able to save me. You would be able to stop time for a second. You would make a miracle happen and show me. You would take the pain away. You would deflate me, fold me up, put me in your pocket and use me later.

Hack, chew and spit. You’ve got to get them out of your life. They will haunt you until the end of your days. They’ll make you want to die. It’s a bad price to pay. If I could have a bullet for every time mother and father wanted to make me die, I would have enough to slaughter every pig who needed it. I don’t want to be one. It’s not my contempt for humanity that keeps me from being a father. It’s the word. I’m a lot of bad things. You hear what the little shitheads say... But a father, I never want to be a father. All I want do is fight and kill mine. I want to engage him in combat. I want him to make me fight for my life. I want to take his so I can live out what’s left of mine. I deny myself life by not killing him. I think he wants me to. I can feel it in my fist-like thought. You have to get away from them. I hope they didn’t hurt you. I hope they didn’t fuck you up. I wish they had let your mind free years before you had to rip it from their grasp. Think about it, recon the damage done. Don’t do it all at once. The explosion might stop traffic.

I wish you well on your trip. Life is boring and short. The process is hard. It leaves scars and then just leaves.