to make up for the fact that it's me to make up for the fact that it's me to make up for the fact that it's me

The nearer trees were all autumn gold and the hulking evergreens that make my little skyline were dark behind them. There was the sound of birds and insects. It was dusk and the clouds were clumping up. I was fascinated by a plane taking off and wondered if it was close enough to hear it, then with the sound delay I was hearing it. No sooner had that wretched sound dissipated than the twinkling of raindrops hitting the pond started, so musical. It began to come down in earnest and all at once the insects stopped chirping. At first it was so fine and constant it completely mattified the pond. The ducks hurried to be near the water’s edge. Rain clouds thickened and became so dense they were almost purple. Then it was too dark to see the gold trees, but still light enough for the contrast of those unyielding evergreens.

My experience of Self is so dizzying I can hardly keep track of it. The numbing cold of consummate self loathing twists around the burning impulse to be witnessed and leaves me gasping for proof of my own significance or effect. All I can find to gulp down into my starving ego is more weakness, more desperation, more misanthropy. I come untethered. I curl up around the rot which I can sometimes abate but never entirely rid myself of. A throbbing, infected little wound that I favour more like a sprained limb. I make excuses. I refuse to walk on it. I stop doing my dishes. I find that I have never wanted anything. Certainly not enough to climb out of the hole, which resembles the grave but I am told is not. The tar around my ankles rises predictably as a tide pulled by hormones, small rejections, incomplete tasks - until I can no longer even walk to the tidy edges of the not-grave which I have worn down after many years making friends with the walls of it.