The Child

I am a cauldron of rage, despair, strength for all the wrong reasons, and weak where I should be strong. The bones beneath my skin heavy, I can feel their brittleness, yet the skin on my arms feel as taught as strings on an instrument, so tight I fear I will rip apart when touched. How do I convey this shell, that, tears surge at the back of my throat when I want to speak, the pressure in my lungs, a body that is so fraught with tension it pains to be inside of it, that I want to peel myself out of this skin, tear the hair off my head and scream. Yet I can’t scream, the swell of the gale hammers against my throat but there is no sound. I am angry, I am sad, I am angry, I am hateful, I am beyond, I am loathsome of me.

The claustrophobia, the intense stimulus, the captivity, the insolence brought together is a maelstrom, a catalyst to my undoing. I know better, I know my buttons, I know my stressors, I know and yet I fail. I pretend, or perhaps I think I can overcome, but I know. I know. So do I walk, move away from what I know is wrong, wrong for me, or continue on knowing I am a fool, and that I am the only one to blame when the hell surfaces.

To the core of me I despise me, despise me for not being able to make the climb, for the wretched self I become, for my intolerability. I should be able to accept yet I can’t, it eats at me, makes me smaller than small, and then the ugly finds the holes to seep in. For when I hate me, I turn the key and open the door, the door to my nerves, my head, the muscles of my corpse.

I don’t want to be ugly. How can a child make me this way, I don’t have the words to even express the disgust welling in me, how abhorrent I am to be someone that cannot overcome. I can when I keep the boundaries sharp and clear but when it fades to grey, the cacophony beats its drums, there is no reprieve, a prick to a balloon, a shot to the head, and the world begins to fade to black, and what was once human becomes a creature that beats at the temples, so hard I want to scrape the skin from my face to make it go, to shut up, the space becomes a hazy vision of stimulus, where words and sounds do become sticks and stones, where I want to pull my nerves from end to end to make it stop, clap my hands over my ears and eyes and holler soundlessly till the beating ends. But it never ends, it worsens, I become smaller and smaller, the world shrinking to surround me, and I hide because any touch, any sound, any stimulus is needles. I want to take the needles and hurl them back, stop hurting me, stop touching me, can’t you see, you’re making me crazy.

And yet, all it is, is a child, a child I cannot overcome nor walk away, because the fault is to be borne by me, my inability to absorb what I cannot control. I cannot control this wildness, and my responsibility is to walk away. I am the third wheel and the issues are mine, and I need to leave be, remove from the equation, to help me, help them, help ugly.

The longer the conundrum stretches, the worse I feel, and worse is food for the ugly gods that feed within me, for every setback I face, they grow stronger, I feel weaker, they devour, I angst, I shrivel into a shell, arms cradled around me, wanting them all to go away, yet I must go on, weight within, to repeat what I know is wrong, again, yet I know…