unheralded

Who am I without the ideals that bind my soul to a podium with roaring crowds that sound like a demanding voice of a father? Who am I without the medals that chain around my neck, showing my aptitude to enter a home? Who am I if I could be a child uttering a singsong of nonsensical words I placed together out of mirth? Where should I be when I'm just a man?

And I've found my body crushed under the lofty pile of promises of bright tomorrows I have built for myself.

I'm sorry if I'm all poetry, constantly romanticizing human suffering. I cannot look at my wounds as anything but poetically curated phrases stitched into my skin. I am always drowning myself in words and inks, unable to face the sickness—the abnormality of being me.

I pretended to have faith in God to alleviate my loneliness, hoping that perhaps, there was someone out there who would listen to the muffled sobs trapped between my ragged and poverty-stricken palms. However, the more I prayed, the more I realized that misery is a sickness not created by any god to be cured. Neither was there a cure to be found, nor a god.

Tell me that I am despicable. Paint my face with blood to illustrate my monstrosity, to emphasize my irredeemable nature, and to validate that I am beyond love. Tell me unequivocally that I am unforgivable—assure me that my self-imposed punishment is justified.

I've never been a healer, nor have I been healed. I've never truly listened, nor have I talked. I am uncomfortable and discomforting. I have ensconced my being within a place that made me feel as if I were there but never actually was. I've become so estranged and distant that even in my grave, I will not be there.

I'm fairly desensitized, or rather, I've grown accustomed to extremes. It's either I'll starve to death or be punished for the sin of greed. So, unless your love grips me fiercely, or manifests with the intensity which leaves marks on my skin, I cannot trust it. If your love doesn't scratch at my soul, it feels as distant as a god until you build temples and kneel before it.

Maybe I've become too selfish, too self-absorbed that whenever something awful befalls my world, I always think of myself more than anyone else. I don't attempt to see the damage around me, but rather the damage I've received. I don't know, I don't know. I know somebody's hurt, but I'm hurting too.

Here it is again, the longing I could never name, that finds me without warning, like an unfeeling wave that washes over my being with a sudden feeling of weakness and helplessness, leaving me with just a desire for something I don't even know and will never be mine.

"Sit with your feelings," they say, "offer them a glass of water, maybe a cup of coffee. Listen to what they have been dying to say, grasp the voice that has been dying to be heard." But the voices are telling me to die. How can you offer them a glass or a cup and sit with them? How can you attempt to be pleasant and calm around a horrifying and always screaming voice? How can you sit with something that points a dagger at your throat? Tell me, how can one not run away from a feeling that makes you want to dig your own grave?