Trapped and Condemned

There’s a lump in my throat, and I feel like my entire body is sunburned, encased in some very hot corset that isn’t fitting symmetrically. I’m tired, too. My skin is crawling like maggots, and the air conditioner in the kitchen window drones in that quiet writhing sound that a mass of maggots can make.

Mood swings. You gotta love them.

I’m not quite gone enough to need to be put away, but gone enough that my safety at any moment may be compromised. Oh numbness, oh joy, oh death, death, death. I’m not dead, I never will be, but I can feel it just the same. I feel alive as ever, one big-huge-giant, pulsating bruise. I can feel everything, every movement in my body and every painful, ricocheting, helpless thought.

I feel happy, I feel hyper, I feel sad and pissed-off and fake. I’m a liar. I shouldn’t talk or exist or be allowed to think at these times because it isn’t really me--or perhaps these are the few times when I AM being me. Perhaps these are the times when I’m truly free.

I hate hate hate it, I like it, I want it, I’m afraid of it, I want peace, I know it’ll all go away in a few hours, I know it’ll come back again and again. That’s what I hate the most about it--it lives, it’s real, and then it dies and is no longer something to fuss about again, but I know that when it comes back it’ll matter again. The fact that I fully realize this hypocrisy and yet am unable to change it with this realization is the worst. It’s a tug-of-war, it’s a paradox, its irony, and it makes me feel like standing in the middle and screaming like Creusa on fire. It leaves me jaded.

It’s funny, really.

But since I already live on some bucolic little lake surrounded by a wood lot and fresh air and all that jazz, there’s no escape for me. No farm can cure me. The alternative is escaping to the city for some stagnant, smoggy air, but I’m not sure how that would work out.