I need to be saved from myself.

All I ever wanted is to be loved. I needed it, wanted it, craved it; I practically starved for it. Love was and will forever remain a foreign concept to me, a beautifully sweet alien language my mind and body will never experience, understand or deserve. I silently pleaded for love from a biological father absent since my first breath when I entered the world. Childhood crept by with a few temporary fatherly role models in the shape of several uncles - I wasn’t their child or responsibility though. Things are easy in the first 5 - 6 years when raising a child but things become complex after that. They disappeared, didn’t care or simply got bored; I’m not sure what happened. What did I do wrong? Why did my own father not want me? Why did my uncles give up? Who had the answers to these questions? Why did no man love me? I stumbled through my teenage years guarded, completely isolated. I clung to the idea I would find true love and be accepted; I would finally get my ‘happily ever after’. I never found anything of the sort. I found men who could mimic and weaponise love but that’s it. I chased it every single time thinking ‘this is what love is and it’s what I deserve!’. I begged them to love me, just a tiny bit. I’d never experienced love from the start, how could I have known I was merely setting myself up for self-destruction every single time. I never found love but instead I found lust. I threw myself head first in to the arms of lust, it’s hands burned me each time a new greedy man feasted on my body. I numbed my mind and let myself be desired and devoured. If this was the only way I would ever be wanted by a man, so be it - I’ll take it. To this day, my skin prickles with disgust at the things I let happen to myself in the search for love, the rapist who’s hands have forever scorched my skin and inside me, the father who’s DNA is in my cells but he never wanted me, the several men I gave my whole heart to but couldn’t love me, all the men who have tried to love me but I wasn’t worthy enough. All I ever wanted is to be loved but it will never happen, at least I will never stop myself from giving love.

I promised myself I would get better, I wouldn’t spend another day curled under a blanket shaking and shivering unable to open my eyes because natural daylight was too painful. I promised I would nourish my body, respect it and do no harm. I wouldn’t keep myself starving and I would take any medication as required. I promised myself I wouldn’t slip out of control ever again but this spiral came around so quickly, my head is constantly in a tailspin. I promised myself I would never think about which method would be the simplest, quickest and painless for me to take my last breath. I could stay here and waste away or swallow a whole strip of beta blocking medication chased down with a nest whiskey of my choice. I promised I wouldn’t think about how quickly the medication would take effect and eventually my heartbeats would slow down to the point my heart would stop entirely. I promised I wouldn’t think about how lovely it would be to leave my body behind, free myself from a human life void of love, attention, affection and every single other basic emotion we crave. I promised I wouldn’t ponder how long it would take for someone to find my body or notice I’d disappeared. I promised I wouldn’t consider writing a few final letters to the handful of people who may or may not miss me once I had died - I decided not to write anything. I promised not to harm myself or to ever allow these thoughts to creep in to my soul ever again. I promised it would never be this destructive anymore but it’s never been as bad as it is right now. I promised myself to stay alive because each human breath is sacred; I don’t feel anything like that though. I promised myself all these things and one by one, I broke each of them until there were none left. Now I’m here with no promises and no where left to go. I want to make one final promise to you, this one I know I will not break. I promise you I cannot survive this.