If You Can Abstain from Being Its Murderer, Then You Shall be Its Savior
I need to quiet my mind, the state I am in now forbids intellect and plays within the realms of fantasy. Thoughts are scattered, I feel simultaneously empty and filled to the brim. My mind races through visions without form. Ideas are nebulous and incomplete. For a moment I capture one, and like a bird, hold it within the palm of my hand. My fingers stroke its wings and head, denying flight. It trembles for my foreign touch. In pity and heartbreak, I release it into an element of its own design. Such a thing is more pleasing to it than my coarse hand.
Where did the visionary go? The writer of this age was lost within the tumult of a bygone generation. I long for a place whose name I do not know. I wish to escape, feel a foreign land 'neath my runner's stride, and to know the ground so trembles by my being there, to be the cause of some effect, the catalyst of an age yet to be born. The labor pains make me gasp and thrust this beaten body upon its knees.
My beautiful bird wings the clouds in his flight and traces the horizon with his agile body. He is a solitary creature though, singing but to himself and the heavens. He looks no more at me, feet fast to the earth and eyes on his downy breast. I had believed I knew what freedom felt like, believed to have held it in my palm. Such things were not meant to be held. My cold hands became his prison. I marveled at him behind my fingers and he glared back at me through bars.
We hold too tightly that which we love, and strangle that which we feel we cannot live without. I often wonder how many things have met their fate in my hands, how many precious dreams, ideas, and memories I have asphyxiated. They go silently.
Tell me, is this the reason you place that which I desire just beyond my reach? You yet fear that I will crush it? In my younger years I contemplated how it was that a person became a writer, how he or she chose to joyfully accept the call of the pen, as it so beckoned. I realized some time ago that the pen does not ask, but commands. Like a slave master, it drives you into the night, paying heed neither to cries for rest, nor the blisters upon your hands. Taking all, it seldom gives. The reprieve you feel is but an illusion, the swallow you held in your hand, for a time, quickly forgets your smile and remembers no more your prodding touch. It now soars beyond the edges of infinity. Why now should its gaze be directed once more toward earth and you?
If you so love it and did love it as you say you had and do, then you will rejoice for the captive, who, now free, remembers his cage no more. Rejoice for that which escapes your grasp. If you can abstain from being its murderer, then you shall be its savior.
The Box
I think everyone has something they hide away in a box.
I'm ready to talk about what's in mine. I'll start slow.
I used to think that I'd never grow out of the habit of giving all of myself. But, every time it goes wrong, I feel like it becomes harder to do that. And I know the reason. It’s fear. I’m scared, because my motivation has been missing for some time. I used to focus with a single-minded devotion to whatever I did, be it a conversation, an assignment, just life in general. And now I find myself out of touch with everything, and I just don’t get it. I feel like…it both happened overnight and it didn’t. The suddenness startled me, somewhat. In the middle of anything, I’ll lose interest, and drift. My mind will just…pull back, for lack of a better term. I couldn’t tell you what I think about. I don’t know. I’m concerned for myself. But, it’s like a third party concern. Like, I hope it works out, but it won’t affect me in the slightest if it doesn’t. And I wonder where my real emotions are. Because when I’m like this, everything’s under suspicion. Nothing seems right, and assuming the worst is the only way to be. This critical apathy isn’t me. This isn’t who I am! This isn’t…who I am at all.
I want to live as if I’m real.
I remember this one time, I was home alone and I just broke. That was real, but I think that was where it began too. I recall, stumbling into my room and collapsing in front of my mirror to watch myself. My face blotchy and contorted, my torso shaking from the force of my sobs, the despair written in wet tracks down my face. I felt it, and I didn’t. Whatever motivated me to go to my mirror wanted to observe. And it’s me, but it’s not me. I’m not talking like this is a bad horror movie and I’ve been taken over by some supernatural force. I’m talking like, I feel like there’s a part of me I don’t really know about, and it’s separate from the face I display to the rest of the world. Underneath the mask, there’s nothing but a void.
Is this what it means to be a psychopath?
The rest of me both wants to accept it, and lock it in a box in the far reaches of my mind. I feel like I can learn from it, but I feel if I give in and stop fighting, I’ll forget what it was like to care all the time. How can you stop caring? How can you let your heart grow cold? I don’t want that to happen. But I catch myself wondering, would it be so bad? To not let everything affect me so badly?
To accept or reject, that is the question.
One day, I’ll face it. I’m not ready. I’m not sure If I’ll ever be. Somehow, I think I’ve already lost. It doesn’t have a voice. It doesn’t feel. It’s just…there. I feel it watching. The only thing I know is this: it wants out.
For now, I’ve locked it up tight.
But sometimes, when I’m not on guard, I hear the box rattle. Violently.
And’s it’s in those moments I realize the futility of adding another lock, wrapping another chain, of wondering what it is I’m fighting so hard to ignore. In my heart of hearts, I know what’s in there.
Nothing.
I gave too much.
I’ve ran out of whatever it means to feel.
So why does my nothing want out?
Because, psychopaths don’t like to suffer alone. They despise the fullness that emoting brings, even if the emotions are a flood that could drown you. I don't take enough from others to satisfy this...need to feel.
And I don't want to. I'm not a psychopath, yet. I'm going to contain it as long as possible. But I know what's happening. It's inevitable.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Nothing always becomes something.
My something is resentment.
And I've hidden it away, like everyone else.
In a box.