“I took myself to toppers flat,

full of rage and and despair,

wrapped tight in my chest,

because life was

full of sound and fury,

signifying nothing,

to my behest…

What good are cries to the ears of the deaf?

I took myself to toppers flat,

melancholy in an easy friend

once you’ve sank in its depths,

With a solemn eye,

I watched as the specter crept,

so I ran from myself

and chased down

the dreams I learned to forget…

what good is hell when you don't fear death?

So I took my self to toppers flat you see,

With a heavy heart and I leapt,

To make my life come true,

So my soul could rest."

Sometimes It just stares at you. Blank faced, unflinching; patient, even. It startles you every time you see it but you can never look away. This is terror. The nothingness you peer into isn’t alarming to anyone else. Only for you. You've tried countless times to explain what it is but most of the time the words escape you, or the person you are doing the explaining to just says something like “Oh, that sounds bad. You should just go outside more.” which tells you two things: they didn’t hear you and they didn’t want to hear you. These are usually the people that, ironically, pry needlessly, like greedy children prying to open candy bar wrapper with chocolate marred, sticky, and messy hands, even when they’ve been told they shouldn’t because they’ve had one too many already. Ones who eat half the bar and throw the rest away. Ones you wouldn’t even want to touch an already dirtied white T-shirt.

When taken somewhat seriously, people become subject matter experts, parroting “wisdom” that has always failed them in the past. They always know better. No matter how hard you explain or how fancy the words you use, this conversation has the same end every time. Time, after time, after time. You walk away unheard and the person whose spent the entire conversation talking over you, telling you that you’re just lazy, adding more damning stamps in your passport of esteem, along your already seemingly endless journey of self-deprecation and listlessness. These people smile in your face, tell you that you should be grateful for their “support”. These are the same people that tell you they are your friend and that they love you, but that they “regrettably can’t deal with all that sad stuff.” They abandon you. Gradually of course — they aren’t "bad people”. Ultimately, they just reaffirm what you already know. You are alone in this but you must continue on, mired in guilt, contempt, and despair. Collecting more stamps, each stop you make, everywhere you go.

After enough times of this song and dance, each instance is merely a rehearsal for the next performance. You get all the “Oh, geez, I am ok guys!” pretense down to a science to deflect from the fact that instead of talking to them, you’d willfully choose the “madness” in your head. You hate them so much, you’d rather be alone with “it” than with them. At least until you recognize you don’t want that either. You become a hungry ghost who craves everything, yet desiring nothing. Each ‘stamp’ you collect, each step you take, and each person you lose to this, that, or “the other”, drains you. It wears you down until you become an empty vessel, watching life pass you by in its linear stream while it twists in downward spirals. The only thing accompanying you is the madness you are accustomed to and the only thing that sticks with you is your grief. Perhaps of things you’ve lost, to this, that, or the other.

You grab hold of nothing. You can’t even hold on to your life as it spirals away from you. For as long as you could remember, you thought about what it would be like to die. Indoctrinated youth to repudiate such thoughts with ‘positive’ ones, yet dying was your positive thought. This is where you first find true nihilism and pessimism. You don’t give a damn about how the sky looks today or tomorrow. It can all go to hell! Yet, you only can acknowledge how desperate and pitiful you are, and how meaningless it all is. You try to contain yourself as best you can but you explode. You are angry — at the world, your personal failures — and you want to destroy everything! Yet, in your fury, terror, and mania you stare into the endless abyss realizing the only thing there is to destroy, is yourself.

The abyss welcomes you with open arms, so then, you climb as high as you can, and you throw yourself into it.

thegriefcollector

Writing since March 2017 · 2 stories contributed