…because you have to fight that voice every single day, that goddamned voice that you know isn’t really yours but it’s so loud ALL THE TIME and it takes so much energy to push back, to tell it to fuck off, over and over again, and it leaves you exhausted, blanketed by a heavy fatigue that nearly shuts you down completely.
Today was one of those days.
Yesterday was too. And the day before it. The day before that was ok, but that was one day out of 7. Or ten, or fourteen, or however long it’s been this time. Two months? Three?
It’s not because I don’t have friends or family and don’t know love. I experience love every day. It’s not because I need medication or therapy or a cure for loneliness or panacea for a broken heart. That shit heals on its own.
It’s because my brain is broken.
We keep repairing it, strengthening the foundation, applying mental duct tape. There've been long good stretches, the routine frustrations of daily life remaining routine, bearable. And then something happens, a switch gets flipped and The Darkness is audible again. An insidious whisper, telling you that you’re not good enough, that you’re less than, that you’re undeserving. That that last relationship ended not because she’s a fucking mess that can’t communicate until it boils over into an intractable fury but because you failed. Again.
It’s the cumulative effect of love gone wrong, of too many broken hearts in a decade filled with monumental sadness and bewilderment and a furious rage barely hidden beneath your own surface.
It gets louder, The Darkness does. It screams at you to just fucking end it already, 48 is enough, what else do you need to do, what else do you need to know about not being good enough? And you fight back again, every goddamned day and with every goddamned bit of strength you have. Sometimes the battle is fought hourly. Sometimes it retreats long enough to grab a few hours of sleep, allowing you to wake up sweaty and anxious, legs shaking, afraid to leave the covers despite how badly you need to piss right then and it wakes up when you wake up and starts a whole new cycle of FUCK YOU at 5 in the morning.
This is what it’s like for me. I fight on. I’m not giving in. Not today at least.
