a void

a lack

a black hole that drains everything around me

i might appear to be something, sometimes

but i know it’s a mirage

just a vacant hope trying to materialize itself

i breathe iron shavings and they stain my insides crimson

the ground beneath me is icy, steel, unyielding

everything’s frozen, yet nothing melts

everything i touch starts to rust

a frigid, metallic world where everything is real except for me

please let me out

that is difficult to convey to the outside observer

that comes from watching yourself slip

away from sanity and into hell

knowing that it’s getting worse

knowing that your mind is getting worse

knowing that it will hurt more and more

knowing that you’re going to keep slipping

but not knowing how bad it’ll get

not knowing the depths you’ll reach

not knowing what it will take from you

and worst of all,

i can make it tolerable, sometimes.

for a while.

it usually takes something external.

a substance, a person, a challenge,

a focused pain, a forced numbness.

it helps if i drift away from it,

in any direction,

inwards, outwards, into another.

dissolving away from conscious thought

into something else, or someone else.

but sometimes i do wonder

if it’s a sign

that the raw unfiltered life i live

seems to be so unendurable.

it’s not inherent in the life itself.

i think that my life is fine.

it seems fine.

it’s something deeply rooted

within my brain, in my neural pathways.

it seems that i was corrupted

before i ever really truly began.

it’s hard to come to terms with

the reality of the problem

since the problem seems so separate

from my day to day life.

i live, i work, i love.

it doesn’t seem to matter in the end,

because a wicked, invisible magnetism

seems to drag me down regardless.

i don’t really believe in destiny

but i do recognize causality,

and it seems that my past

has preordained a future for me

that i can’t quite bear to imagine.

one that doesn’t hold much kindness

for me or for those i love.

it seems so final.

so settled.

is there anything i can truly do?

or is the cycle of cause and effect