Shackles

I feel myself sink into my bed, the mattress, a rotten carcass that envelopes me. The outline of my body rises up around me like immense walls that leak and soak me whole. I feel myself float in the residue of past lives lived and the light above me swims and dims into a sliver.

I am lonely. Lonelier than I've ever been in my life. How am I still breathing? How am I still sane? Why have I not decayed into this bed and become a dessicated corpse that floats in its own waste?

Why hasn't my heart sped up, crashed and entombed itself in stillness?

How much more can my mind take before it grinds to a screeching halt and ceases to humour existence and its infinite capacity for despair?

For how long would I still linger in this body, a shell, that has chained my consciousness to the shackles of time?

One

I feel Her seep into me. Cold and vicious.

I feel Her sliding her feeble limbs into mine, the corrosive muck of Her merge with my gut and Her frantic breathing take hold within my chest. She looks through my eyes and all I see is devastation. She inhales through my mouth and all I can taste is the bitter stench of bile and I can't stomach it. I want to retch.

And my mind fuses with Her's. Once again, I am Her. All I can taste is Her. All I can feel is Her. "I'll protect you" she croons inside my head. I believe Her. She's always been right. Despite the fury that blurred her eyes and unleashed the depraved thing within, She has always been right.

And, yes. She has always, always protected Me.

Back to Her

I float down into the pit, my feet landing firmly on the filth. A trail of hair, vomit and piss cover the remnants of what I used to be, now charred and dried up. I hear a low rasping, a struggle for breath and a wheezing followed by a rattling cough, feeble and spent.

My eyes adjust to the darkness and I see Her lying curled up by the wall, clumps of hair missing from Her head, eyes raw, bloodied and lifeless, lips cracked and blackened. Her body, naked. Long limbs of skin and bones hung to Her sunken frame.

I walk over, lean down and stroke Her head numbly. Weak as She is, She can barely turn Her head up at me, searching with unseeing eyes, pupils dilated and grey. She is blind, I realise in shock.

"Where were you?" She whimpers, Her broken voice barely audible. "Where did you go?"

I weep quietly, for Her and for me.

"I didn't mean to leave you alone." I whisper back. A weak arm stretches towards me, grabs my leg, nails dipping into my flesh. I sit down by Her head, dragging Her onto my lap.

I sit and stroke Her head... almost lovingly. "I told you. I told you." She croaks in her weakened state. "I warned you, didn't I?"

"I know."

Let Her protect you

Let me protect you, She croaks.

I feel Her nails dig into my head and i let the warmth ooze from my flesh and drip down onto my lids, burning... and the iron stench of it numbs my core.

She coils herself around me, giggling in glee. I feel the muck pulling me in, slithering onto my skin and crawling in through my every orifice. Give in, i tell myself. She will protect you.

And now that I think about it... hasn't She always?

Corpses for anguish, Coils for insanity

Your eyes are open and you stand awake. Lucid. Yet the fragments of your nightmares blind your vision and consume you whole.

How do you focus? How do you concentrate?

The room is small. A desk and three chairs. A bed rests next to a window or a wall. You remember few details. You sit infront of her, always the left chair... and you talk to her impassive face that neither comforts you nor disturbs you. You welcome the stoicity. Somehow that makes it easier.

The room outside is bright and rows of chairs are lined by the wall. One chair has a sign that says "Don't sit on me" with a sad face doodled underneath it. You stare at it for longer than you should.

Children's artwork are displayed on a board. Faceless women sit behind a large counter and they avoid your eyes. Perhaps they know. Do you care? No. Not really. Hell with what people think.

She beckons for you to start so you indulge her. Drawl on and on about September and the hells you walk through every year to get past this cursed month. She interrupts you often today. Tells you things you don't want to hear. Perhaps she's right but you don't want to accept it. Perhaps she's wrong and you are right. Perhaps you do deserve it all. Who the fuck knows? Repentance has been ignored in every shape and form it could possibly be ignored in. 

You drone on about minute corpses and obsidion coils with livid scarlet slits. How you are paralysed in sleep when those thick wet coils slither and slap against you like a lover. How terrified you lie when it hisses loudly in your ear. How it haunts you when the corpses open their eyes and out slither thin strands of serpents that entangle themselves around lifeless limbs and feast while you watch. How those nightmares torture you while you stand awake with flashes that interrupt your vision in translucent layers.

She gives you a form, tells you to fill it out. For next week, she says. Something about mindfulness apps and yoga and replacing thoughts or images or some shit or the other. Your head is swimming with detached thoughts. Your brain feels slushy. Slushy. Slushy is a funny word. Does it mean what you think it means? Strange. No. Sluggish. Yes. That is the word. What does slushy even mean?

You walk home in a daze again. The first time you almost walked into a car. Your eyes focus on the puddles again. Reflected blinking neon lights. Nothing soothes you today, though. You come home and your room is a prison and you sit on the floor, immobile. 

She leaves you alone today. You don't really care anymore. You just sit here, mulling over exit strategies in your head. There is nothing and no one. Only the merry-go-around of chaos you are consumed by and the one question that plagues you every minute of every damned day. 

What IS the point of it all?

Moments

It scares me, how brief those moments are. Moments that don’t even last long enough for me to let my guard down and fully comprehend the magic in them. Moments, that despite their abruptness or insignificance in the grand scheme of things, resonate loudly within my cognizance and linger for decades in the darkened corners of my consciousness, glowing within every now and then whenever my mind strays in a mundane meeting or in those moments of quiet contemplation. I crave those moments because they revive me from the numbness that I am consumed by.

My best friend and I sat at “Thinn Ruhh Park” one cold night, chilled by a slight drizzle, watching streaks of lightening slice open the sky above Villingili. Lightning and thunder, phenomena that used to frighten me to my very core, they thrill me now. I welcomed that thrill that day. It crept up the sides of my face and disappeared into my scalp, leaving a trail of tingling skin. I felt no cold. I felt no fear. Only exhilaration.

A tiny hand in mine and a warm little head resting on my chest, low breathing and soft skin that comforts my own. I sat on the sofa watching Ponyo while he lay asleep in my lap, finally quiet. I nibbled at his cheeks and cuddled his chubby little frame. Few things in life feel that pure and comforting.

I lay on a beach one warm afternoon, komorebi on my skin, shades over my eyes, iPod in hand and a soul sister beside me. Erykah Badu and Stephen Marley’s “In love with you” crooned in my ear while I watched the sunlight gleaming in the liquid horizon. Of all the beaches and all the afternoons I lay on them, this one stands out because in that instant, I completely forgot the world. Completely.

Great tales and excellent television, they make me forget all the horrors of this world. Fantasy, in particular. I tend to immerse myself in them, blocking out the white noise that surrounds me. In all honesty, I feel more alive when I’m watching One Piece or Game of Thrones than I do when I’m among people. I engage, I laugh and I am present in that moment when I am with people but a rather large chunk of my consciousness is numb. But not when I’m reading a good book or watching a good show. They rouse the part of me that feels anesthetized.

One night, a friend and i jogged in that would be industrial zone, venturing further inside simply for the hell of it, my paranoia escalating whenever I saw a group of men huddled in the dark. I have a very unhealthy fear of being groped or worse, which I assure you, are for valid reasons. Anyway, we came upon this area of dug earth that was glowing a vivid red from the streetlights on our left. What caught our eyes wasn’t the colour but the pool of water surrounded by those jagged and sharp mounds of red earth much like the terrain of Mars, as shown in movies. It lay pristine and glistening with the reflection of the stars above us. And so we stood at the edge of a world and gazed into the abyss, mesmerized. Far away from here.

I love rain. I truly do. And I like to drive around after it rains. The chill in the air, the sensation of raindrops on my skin and the vivid green of trees after a shower, they make me smile. I feel a static crackling inside me when it rains, like I am tuned to the sound of falling water. After sundown, the puddles reflect the neon signs on store windows. Sometimes I stand still and look at them and feel my brain flare up. A few weeks ago I walked home in the rain after a particularly brutal day and somehow, I wound up frozen on the pavement, transfixed by the reflected lights. Red, white and green. For a brief few seconds, I felt my body come alive and within that period, I felt consoled.

Conversations. Contradictions. Laughter. The feel of soft silky hair between my fingers. The image of eyes that crinkle in the corner. The sensation of hands that cradle my face and stroke my hair. The feel of eager lips on mine, soft and absolving. And the amber of the fairy lights that encase and warm us during these moments, they revive me.

And as short lived as they are, as few and far between as they may be, those moments leave a significant impression. Perhaps I perceive them to be more extraordinary than they really are. Perhaps the certainty of an expiration date makes all of it seem more wonderful than it really is. Perhaps it is simply what Homer stated, that everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. Perhaps that is all it is. I don’t really care.

Because those moments in life that create an impact on my subconscious are rare. And those moments, those brief glitches in time and space that actually allow me to rid my mind of my truth and all that it entails, they make me feel alive. And i would do anything to feel alive.

Creep

It creeps up on me. Inconspicuously at first. A tightening at the back of my neck. Always the right side. The pressure increases as the tightening ascends and it crawls up and over my head, slowly creeping into the back of my eye. It unfurls its limbs, dozens of them, like those growths that spread on the walls of undead games, and seizes the nerves at the back of my eye. Seizes and tightens their grip on them, suffocating the blood vessels until my eye physically throbs in agony.

The limbs contract then, pulling the nerves further in along with it… and then loosens their grip again. This intensifies, both in pace and strength, gradually becoming something like a heartbeat, only it hurts enough to retch and it hurts enough to make my vision swim. And then follows the aching in my jaw.

This onslaught rarely betrays a hint of its arrival. Groggy days followed by sleepless nights are inevitable victims but sometimes, the most intense assaults are unpredictable. Though days that fill me with a sudden surge of euphoria for no apparent reason are always dead giveaways that I will suffer the next day. Something about the chemicals. Drops and surges. They fuck up.

The sun is my enemy. All light is my enemy. Even this dulled screen that I am staring at as i am being battered by a particularly agonizing attack. Nearly 48 hours now. Resilient fucks that they are, they can last for days on end. And sunlight filtering through the trees, one of the few things that give me true pleasure, becomes a trigger that heightens the pain. All blinking lights and loud noises are the same. All they do are enter the orifices in my head and sear into my brain. Sharp and nauseating. 

Sometimes after I manage to sleep for a few hours, i am lulled into a false sense of security… the presumption that it is finally over. But all it does is simply lie dormant for a while. Perhaps in slumber because I rested or just a cunning deviant who enjoyed my delusions. My guess, the latter.

Of late, flashes of light cloud my vision, searing and crippling. Yesterday I found myself incapable of walking right, my feet refusing to obey the writhing coils sending signals from my mind. The flashes come and go but they leave me exhausted. So exhausted that I want to lay my head on whatever horizontal surface I can find. But that doesn’t exactly help either, given that the tightened string at the back of my head can’t bear more pressure. Lying down only increases the pain.

So I thrash around until fatigue claims me. And then I am unconscious, free of the pain for a while... and when I wake, my first thought is a desperate plea that the relief lasts, at least for a little while.

We are all we need

Shrieks of mocking laughter. That is all I hear. Laughter that resonates within my being and every cell i am comprised of protests in denial.

She is back.

And here I thought I understood Her. That She understood me, what little way She comprehends the concept of solidarity. I wonder if it had all been a facade. The helpless madness within Her eyes. How lost She had seemed when She sat stroking my hair for weeks on end.

Her very posture emanated malice now. More than it used to when She first came into being. She is thinner, taller and Her hair, wilder. The shape of Her face is gaunt and yet She looks stronger. Her eyes are slits, red rimmed and deranged. But it's the look within them that petrifies me. She is completely and utterly focused. Focused on me.

I am slumped against the wall, craven and impotent. The walls are bleeding now. Oozing a dark gunk that smells like carcass. I can't move.

"You craven coward." She hisses, reading my mind. Every syllable is coherent and Her voice is clearer. I whimper in terror.

I have never seen Her this controlled. This calm. This sure. Her dress clings to her now. Her breasts heave, Her shoulders protrude and Her legs are unnaturally long.

She scrapes Her nails on the wall and then turns around and stares at me, Her face breaking into a maniacal grin. I watch in abject horror as She crawls swiftly up the wall, cackling all the while. Making sure She had my complete attention. Making sure I saw it all.

I gape in disbelief at Her speed as She crawls on all fours, defying gravity and comes to an abrupt halt right over my head, Her body upside down. "Hello, Poppet." She hisses... and plunges Her nails into my forehead. I bleed then. Over my eyebrows and into my eyes. I bleed.

The pain is like nothing i've felt before. I realise now that She had held herself back all this time. She hacks deep into me, brutal and relentless. I scream and scream as Her body slides down the length of me, feeding as She went along. "I'm sorry, i'm sorry, i'm sorry." I plead.

She doesn't care. Her body is larger now. Or I am smaller. Somehow i am in Her lap and She holds me by my frail hair. Nails tear into my face as She trails her fingers along it.

She holds me by the jaw and waits till the spasms cease within my body. Waits till I can focus. Agony subsides and I grope around for a hold. I see the slits and I focus on them. "You pathetic little fuck." She whispers.

I wince.

"You let them do this, you know. You let them. You bring this upon yourself. All of it." I weep in silence. My eyes sting from the blood and yet I don't brush it away. I deserve this. I know.

She stares at me then. For a long time. I stare back, body braced for the inevitable. And then She shakes Her head and Her face clears. Her eyes grow larger, less terrifying. Her expression wanes and becomes less cruel.

"I understand now." She says to me in my voice. "Not long now, coward. Hold on."

I stare at Her, willing Her mind to echo what is in mine. And then i feel my strings connect with Her static and fuse into one. And i nod in agreement.

"Wakatta"

Images, memories & lost hopes.

You know that space between waking and dreaming where your body twitches, your eyelids flutter and your breathing switches from rapid to deep and back again on a loop? That is when my mind lets me view forgotten memories, like a ghost floating from the walls of my consciousness, into settings of times past.

A darkened room i lay in, with sunlight filtering through the curtain, my fingers trailing skin that had warmed me, all those long cold nights.

The patio of a cousins home in our island where once we sat, cradling seashells in our hands.

Classrooms that I walked to and from that echoed with excited laughter and innocence lost.

Walking through the graveyard, lingering where my great grandmother rested, watching rain drip down her tombstone and seep into the ground where she lay, I hoped, in peaceful repose. I was often told that I was her little doppelganger.

Bright lights that flickered above me while I lay cowering in pain on an unyielding hospital bed.

A bloody sunset that draped us in amber while we ran in unrestrained delight on a beach, chasing translucent little crabs into the waves.

These moments that still dwell in my subconscious mind, despite their insignificance, they flare up when my body falls into that state. And I am reminded of who I was and what it felt like to be me, right then and there. Those memories, they melt and dissolve into one another. Some, coherent strings of thought, while others are flashes of light, speech and faces.

I am mostly aware of it when it happens and i let it flood me, though there are moments when a part of me gropes around for a hold on reality. But still, i am at peace when i'm in that state, where I am neither awake nor asleep but simply suspended in an undemanding void that coccoons me.

I welcome it everytime.

I see you

I lie in Her lap, empty. The stench of piss and excrement doesn't bother me anymore. I don't really feel anything anymore. Except this whirlpool of nothingness that sucks me into my chest and expels me back out again while I lie here, immobile.

I hear my breath and feel Her nails raking through my hair, carving open minute gashes on my scalp. We are surrounded by people but they ignore us. So we stay here, hoping they'll feign ignorance forever.

I look up and see Her glassy bloodshot eyes darting from one person to the other, terrified, enraged, terrified again. I whisper Her name and She looks down. But She doesn't really see me. She could rarely focus. The world overwhelmed Her. And that is why She stayed in the Pit.

Are we in the Pit now, I wonder? Who are all these people? Are they down here with us or are we up there with them? I can't focus either.

She pats my face, Her nails scraping the skin and drawing blood. I don't think She means to hurt. Then She coos at me, her voice rasping and shrill. Lulling me to sleep, perhaps. And resumes Her frantic observation of the blurs that dart past Her vision. I wonder how much She sees.

Sometimes I can sit up and talk to Her. Her way of communication being incoherent rasping monologues that cease and turn into a hiss whenever the blurs stray too near. I try to distract Her with songs that I remember, recollections of my childhood that I covet and fistfuls of leaves strewn nearby. Those are the good days. She loves the leaves as much I do, the emerald glow in them. They made us calm.

Most days I just lie in Her lap, my throat raw and my eyes raw and my heartbeat pounding loud within me. Most days that is all there is.

But lately She appears lucid for short periods of time. Sometimes, for a few minutes, Her mumbling is even rational. Almost. Her eyes focus onto my face and She sees me. And She stares, confused. I don't think She recognises me. I don't think She remembers who we are. But there is a flicker of clarity within Her eyes, which become sharper, whenever it happens.

I keep looking up at Her face more often now. Hoping I could grasp those moments and remind Her of who we are. Of what we are. And what needs to be. Maybe I can convince Her to help us now. Maybe we do have a chance. 

Unconquerable Soul

Finally got around to reading Archer's Prison Diaries and this is what greeted me when i opened the book. Note to self;

INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole.
I thank whatever gods may be,
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning of chance,
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears,
Looms but the Horror of the shade.
And yet the menace of the years,
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate.
I am the captain of my soul.

- William Ernest Henley

"Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill..."

When unhealthy bacteria invades your body, your immune system retaliates by making you ill and this in turn flushes out the infection that is threatening you. Its the same with people. When you love someone and lose them, your whole world ceases to make sense and you become this weak pathetic mound of flesh, bone and blood that lingers haggardly in the shadow of your former self, the happy deluded self that had floated on a cloud of denial for so long.

So you subconsciously find a distraction, an obsession, another denial that would lessen the all-consuming pain. But it's toxic and weakens you further, wreaking havoc inside your mind and coarsing through your veins and it's all that you can think about because anything is better than the pain of having lost what you loved with the might of your soul. So you stay toxic and you ride it out, one day at a time.

And someday you'll wake up to find that neither of those things hurt as much as they used to. And you'll realize that you can laugh without being burdened by the need to please those who are concerned about you. And that you can listen to a song without memories stretching those gashes further apart. And you'll know that you will be happy again. Someday.

So till then, you wake up. You despair. And you sleep again. And hope that tomorrow will be less cruel.

Her

Lately She seems indifferent to my presence. Just sits in the corner, raking Her nails on the ground, eating maggots off the floor, casting occasional glares in my direction. I lie in my own filth, blood mixed with grime, oozing gashes and rotting flesh. I suppose She has accepted my residence in Her domain, ignoring me for the most part, except for when She needed a hit. And when she was bored.

At times when i catch my breath after long bouts of hacking, i feel Her nails on my face, digging into my flesh. And yet it feels more like a caress than pain being inflicted. I almost welcome it.

I hear nothing except for Her breathing and my own rasping lungs struggling to inhale through the burning pain in my throat. But why? For what? Who would care?

Why do i try to breathe? Why do i wake up? Why do i continue to exist?

Sometimes i hear Her hum. It sears into my brain, making it writhe. I welcome that too. I welcome anything besides numbness. Being numb was fine for a while. But then it started to feel like forever. I need to feel something, anything, to feel alive now. Even if it is agony.

Sometimes i wake up to find Her feeding on me, Her deranged eyes justifying Her lack of mercy. I feel i understand Her now. So i lie in silence and watch her feed.

The Pit has come alive, transforming into a maze from which She emerges after long periods of absence. I long for Her return whenever She leaves, sometimes slithering, sometimes skipping, sometimes crawling on all fours. Depends on Her mood, really.

She would leave looking like Herself and come back looking like i did, whenever i used to crawl up there. Somedays She would return cradling leaves in Her hands. That always makes me smile. And somedays She would return with long tales of Her exploits.

Apparently no one seems to see Her like i do. No one seems to notice that Her eyes are not mine.

Most days She would return with slumped shoulders. She'd sit beside me, coo at me like i'm an infant in her care. Her eyes remained the same, though. Demented eyes that saw me as something She had loved and lost long ago. Something that had driven Her over the brink of sanity. I cry for Her. I've realized that i am all She has now.

Whenever i beg Her to end it She would slap me, Her long nails cutting into me, Her piercing voice screaming incoherent words into my face. Took me a while to decipher her wails. "I need you. I need you."

But i wish She would understand that my release would also mean the end of all Her suffering. I wish that someday She would grasp the truth of that and do us both a favour.

And so i lie here, my veins filthy and my skin flayed. And i wait.

I Garden ...

I garden to silent the turmoil in my head

I garden to soothe the frantic quiver in my chest

I garden to calm the tremor in my limbs

I garden to repress my fickle little whims

I garden to grasp life in my own hands

I garden to feel tranquil, for a change

Wednesday's Children

A suicide prompts all sorts of reactions within our diverse and divided little society. After the most recent tragedy occurred, my feeds were brimming with status updates and shares by people who perceived the incident from multiple angles.

There is the self righteous faction that "strongly condemns" the "selfish" act and the "lack of faith" which, of course, is the ONLY viable reason a person would resort to suicide.

And then there are the "Comedians", the people who could not care less about the consequences of their remarks or how cruel they are for trivializing something that clearly hurts people associated with the deceased.

But at least the people I've classified above are clear cut. I know what they are and i expect nothing but the exact same reactions from them whenever a tragedy of this magnitude occurs.

My confusion lies within the community that clearly understands and acknowledges the fact that a person would only be driven to end his/her life when that person is incapable of coping with whatever hell they dwell in. Those who believe that the people who succumbed to the voices in their heads that told them to end it were, in fact, battling with Mental Illnesses. These are the people i am bewildered by since most of them are sufferers and the others, sympathizers.

It's astounding that so many of the sufferers are of the same mind and yet so desperate for understanding and acceptance. How are they so alike and yet so alone when surrounded by all these people who claim to feel exactly the way they do? How are they in pain and yet incapable of extending a hand towards someone who is battling the exact same demons that they are? Why do we not bother to make the effort we reprimand others for not making?

As for the sympathizers, i know it can be extremely hard to listen to the same issues over and over again. And there comes a point where you need to distance yourself from the negativity just to feel normal again. And that's only human. But at least you have the choice to separate yourself from the doom and gloom. They don't. So if those people mean anything to you, please don't abandon them.

I see so many people struggling with Mental Illness and they are weary of keeping a lid on the despair that consumes them. Sometimes all it takes is ONE friend, ONE lover or ONE family member who understands or at least tries to. Just having one supportive human being could make all the difference. Just one. That is all.

So be that person. I know you are suffering. I know it even hurts to breathe at times. But they despair, just as you do. They need, just like you do. So extend your hand. Be that person. You could be saving a life.