I was going over some of my older pieces, and I wanted to revisit a couple.
The upcoming piece was written as a challenge, a cry for help if you will to everyone in my life that hurt me, or thrown me away somehow. People whop should have loved me, but for whatever reason choose to abandon that, in some cases use me as a scapegoat for their shortcoming and aggressions.
Much of it centers around the habit I became accustomed to of hurting myself, before others could. This started as a child, centered predominately around my mother, and my family life at the time. I was often humiliated, and put down to an extent that my self worth was ultimately destroyed by the time I was nine or ten years old.
It was so bad that I looked for ways to stop those who were abusing me from doing harm to me. What seemed to work was to punish myself, often physically, before they could. I can recall whipping myself with electric cords (which is detailed in the piece below), and as I grew into my early teens I turned to cutting myself with sharp objects, and even punching myself in the face.
I would do it to make them stop. The physical abuse I had grown numb to, it was the mental and emotional anguish that ate away at me. When I would be assaulted with that mental and emotional abuse, I would transform it into physical abuse through masochism. If they could witness it, or the scars left behind, sometimes it would garner me a relief from the torture my heart and mind were going through.
This is a particularly horrible aspect of my life, which I have shared with only a few people in my. Some have seen it first hand. At the center of it, is my own personal demon that rises anytime I am made to feel I hurt someone, or I caused others pain even if indirectly. I feel I should suffer instead.
But grown directly form the abuse I suffered as a child is a burning hatred, that is saying, “Look what you made me do, now stop hurting me”. I wanted those people to see that all the times I was told I was worthless, I would never be anything, all the times I was made to cry, that there were real affects for all the world to see.
Even I grew older, I came to think it people a certain sense of satisfaction to hurt me. That they somehow relished in their ability to keep me down. Again lashing out at myself in a manner that was more brutal, more out in the open than emotional or mental abuse would maybe hit home to those people. Maybe if they saw how bad it hurt, if they saw the bruises, and all the bleeding they wouldn’t feel happy to see my in pain anymore.
There is allot of anger in this piece centered around my mother, but that anger also applies to love itself. All the times I felt this way, I felt unloved. In many ways, I was angry at God, why would God do this to me?
Ultimately the masochism resulted in wanting to cause the ultimate harm to myself, to commit suicide. My thoughts always were, “Maybe when I’m gone, I’ll mean something to you”. That perhaps, maybe then people would realize what it was I was going through. Mayeb then they would see how I hurt, and what parts they played in it. But ultimately, it would forever stop the pain.
With that said, here is the first piece:
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A Final Goodbye
I was a little boy, just a little child. The sting of the electric cords whipped across my back. It wasn’t your hand; it was mine that guided them. But I did it for you. Did it make you happy to see me hurt, to see me punish myself? All those times, I was just a little boy.
Why did you laugh when I cried? And where were you all the times that I died? When I was bathed in blood in the street; on the gurney, Drano stopping my heart; over dosed on the livingroom floor, choked on my own vomit. Where the fuck were you?
Did the blood on my arms make you see? All those times, just what it was you did to me? The cut of the blade, the sting of the needle, isn’t that what you really wanted? Didn’t you want to see me hurt, for all the bad things I’d done? Didn’t you want to see me cry? Isn’t that what you really wanted?
Fucked me up for good. Fucked me up beyond repair. I wasn’t perfect enough for you. I was you’re burden; I was everything in your way. I wasn’t your child; I was your living abortion.
Older, even more fucked up than before. Unworthy, easily replaceable, lifelike and pose able. Dress me up and tell me lies. Parade me around, and show the world your toy. Beat me, abuse me, control me, I am forever nothing.
I’ll beat myself to sleep, cut off this rotting meat. Render me to pieces, isn’t that what you really want? Guide my hand to the bottle, put the pills in my mouth. Choke me till I swallow. Pin me down, and watch me cry, watch the tears run dry. Watch my body die.
Isn’t that what you really wanted?
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When I was 17, I committed my first real attempt at ending my life. All the childhood trauma had come to a head that summer. I had run out of my Mother’s house, because I finally stood up to her abusive lover the year before, and was now living with my father. I can’t really blame my Father and my Step Mother for how I was treated there. Having a royally fucked up 16 year old kid dumped on you isn’t an easy thing to deal with.
It seemed I was punished for things that were so petty it was ridiculous. Leaving my tooth paste out on the bathroom counter, not putting my water glass in the dishwasher. I wasn’t just yelled at, my freedoms were stripped away, I was told how bad I was, and it just ate on me.
This piece speaks for itself of the state of mind I was in. The hollow empty feeling, like my head and my heart suddenly became detached from reality. If I recall I had been grounded for the entire summer because I was late getting home from school one day. I was laying on my bed in my room, my father was arguing with my Step Mother and was trying to give my little sister a bath. She was of course screaming.
I started crying, I’m not sure exactly why, but I know I cried for a while, and then suddenly, it was like a lightswitch had been turned on somewhere, I knew what had to be done.
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A Trail Of My Footsteps
The screaming was too much to bear. I could feel the walls of my mind and body closing in around me, smothering me. I had crawled out the window, and walked blindly, dazed to the store above the highway. Just past the overpass. You’d miss it, drive right past, if you didn’t already know it was there.
The sound of the cars passing below was like the wailing of suffering souls. The cries of the damned spiraled up off the pavement and soared up over head into my ears. The world was collapsing, vision was surreal, a patchwork of images overlapping others, time out of sync.
There was no pain, no feeling, for a moment my vision was clear as I watched the skin separate, crimson shooting out into the street, splattering on the window of a car as it drove by. They wouldn’t stop, no one would. A spray of their washers, a quick swish of their wiper blades, and my suffering was washed away from them.
Red dots littered the ground at my feet, like rain they fell. My hand ran red, the warmth of my soul washing away the grime. Everything was silent. The cars stopped their wailing, the trees made no noise in the breeze, the birds were sadly mute. I walked, each step another release, another moment closer to god.
My boot began to run thick with blood, splattered and stained; my shorts clung to my leg. The chain about my wrist glinted now and then in the sunlight, a flash of silver, stained red. I started to feel myself slipping away. A trail of crimson dots had marked my passage.
Past the happy houses, and gardening gnomes I walked. The world closed in more with each step, the colors ran drab. To the street, that house, that one there, that’s where I walked, nearly a mile from the store above the highway, to here I walked. My legs buckled, I fell. My face turned up, my vision fading. In the narrow tunnel of light, heaven unfolded it’s arms, and in it’s embrace, the pain disappeared.
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Obviously I did not die. The little sister of my girlfriend’s best friend had apparently seen my collapse. My girlfriend was t their house which was just a few houses down the street from where I fell, and was actually walking back there from my best friend’s house. I’m not entirely sure in what order things transpired. The paramedics were called, and I remember vaguely my girlfriend holding my head in her lap as I was slipping in and out of consciousness, her crying, begging me not to die. I was unconscious for the ambulance ride, I had lost quite a bit of blood. Later they told me that if I hadn’t been found when I was, I would have died.
I still bear the scar of that day on my wrist, and tucked away in a box is the chain bracelet I wore on that arm. My girlfriend had the key to the lock, it was something of a peculiar irony that she happened to be there. She took the chain off my wrist before the paramedics arrived. In a box it still sits, flakes of blood still adorn it.
It was not my intention to be found, especially not by my friends, or my girlfriend. In hindsight, perhaps God couldn’t just let me die, and God made sure that people were there to rescue me.
