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Nobody actually needs me, and that honestly really hurts.

The pain is not like a nightmare you get when you’re five. Those things are adventures, explorations of what lurks in the dark corners of your mind. I wish I had more nightmares now. You see, the pain, it’s not like getting slapped, or getting your heart broken, or breaking a bone. It’s not like grieving a loss. It’s not rejection. What the pain is all about is not the cut, but the blood you don’t wash off and cover with a bandaid until it’s already crusted over. It’s not about the damn cigarette, for Christ’s sake, it’s about the lighter. The pain is not what somebody else does to you or what the universe assigns you. This pain that I’m talking about, the kind that turns in your bones and slams your chest from the inside, the pain that leaves you so winded, this pain is only the prelude to what you do to yourself. When you have everything to lose, but you’re so numb inside that you stand at the edge of the cliff anyway. And you’re so hollow that the wind sways you and your chest tips over and it doesn’t matter, whatever happens doesn’t even matter because you keep taking your chances and getting lucky, but it’s not the pot of gold that you want. It’s the fucking colors of the rainbow. It’s the desire to see friendly places that make you feel safe because lately all you feel is dangerous and therefore, endangered. The pain foreshadows you hunting you, racing thoughts against a tired body, “mind over matter” on steroids. The pain doesn’t make you smoke the cigarette, because the first thing I recall it making me do was steal the pack from my father’s office. The pain is not always pain, sometimes it’s a gaping hole, and it is the solid cement foundation for how you mutilate your mind and body when you’d give anything to feel anything other than empty, empty, empty.