Why do I write?
To confess?
To unburden myself?
To leave a record of my trials, of my tribulations, of my slow and inescapable descent into madness?
Do I simply write because I cannot speak all of the words racing in my thoughts?
That even my mother tongue cannot capture the words aloud?
Is it because I live in a world where my truth is too much?
Too powerful?
Too graphic?
Too real?
Too undesired?
Too unwanted?
Am I lying when I speak?
Do I bear false witness to the world?
Why must I always hide behind this mask?
Behind the greatest lie of all, “I am all right.”
I smile in despair.
I laugh while choking down tears.
I write self-affirming words when I am filled with self-hatred.
I am okay, my guiding deception.
I am a liar, a fake, a fraud, an impostor.
I am a fox clothed in wool,
lying in wait to take advantage of the best intentions of those around me.
I am an emotional sponge, a succubus of the heart.
I absorb everything around me:
emotions, experiences, traumas, and the suffering of everyone around me.
I anguish over their pain, I cry over their sorrows.
I am the demon in their nightmares, I pine for death over their lamentations.
I cannot escape this misery, this overwhelming and all-encompassing agony.
It tempers every happiness, every moment of joy; it never fails to to extinguish the flame within me.
Sometimes that pain is the only fire I have left, the only truth I can cling to.
The memories and regrets, forever carved into my flesh, stand as a monument to the only past I can remember.
I look at the them, I think of those moments, I think of the look on her face, I think of the hate and anger and utter desire to make myself feel pain.
My greatest work, written in blood, forearms as pages, lines fading like an old book.
I do not know why I do this, why I break open my chest to let the world see my aching heart, my bleeding soul.
It is a compulsion, an obsession, an unquenchable desire to scream somewhere that everyone can hear me and no one can mute me.
I must write this all down, either by ink, in ones and zeroes, or in blood.
I cannot keep this in.
The truth does not flow out of me, it breaks itself out of my breast, clawing it’s way to the freedom of the ether.
Why do I write?
Because I cannot stop, no matter how hard I try.