There's something wrong with me, but I can't get to it.  I've packed up all the little bits of ickyness and buried them so deeply, that I can't dig them up, even when I want to.  At first, I did it to protect myself, so that I could keep going, keep functioning.  Now, I can't stop.  Being filled with all of these rotting packages is beginning to manifest as something very unpleasant.  Beginning, ha!  I'm in an advanced stage of decomposition, more like. I feel like it's eaten out what used to be on my inside and left a certain heavy hollowness.  I'm like the walking dead.

I haven't the slightest idea how to undo what I've done.  I'm afraid that if I succeed at unwrapping those packages, I will be subjected to all the pain I have buried all at once.  How do I reach in and select only one, without causing an avalanche of putrified emotions to overwhelm me?  But I have to start somewhere.  It's my only hope.  I can't be the person I have become.  I can't smile or laugh or even cry (much).

The easiest package to reach should be the one I buried most recently.  But I'm so out of touch with my own comings and goings that I don't know which one that was.  I will have to wander the ruins of what was once my psychological well-being until I trip on a freshly dug plot.

Aha!  My career, there you are, I buried you just recently, you poor little thing.  You were so young and bright, once.  I had high hopes for you.  I remember your gestation like it was yesterday.  It was long and arduous, indeed. But it was full of excitement and wild ideas, and there was almost no end to my dreams of where you were going and what you would do once you were loosed upon the world.

And then, the daggers, both real and imagined, came.  You were rough on me, career.  You set me to sweating in a corner, by myself, for hours and hours and hours.  I was quite a trouper trough it all, actually.  At first, I seemed to have limitless energy, so you pushed me harder, then harder still.  For a long time, I took every punch, every kick and got up afterwards more determined than ever.  You never saw the internal damage that it was doing to me.  You just gave me pep talks and told me that my time was coming and that I would show everyone soon, and then pushed me back out there to try again.  You reminded me of my obligations and demanded that I sacrifice for the greater good -- you. Soon, the hills got steeper and the work got rougher, and you could see that it was taking a toll on me.  But instead of giving me a break, you reminded me that my time was just around the corner and told me to work harder.  And I did.  And the daggers started to fly again, both real and imagined, but most of all, they came from you.  And so I buried you, or at least I tried to.  But you won't stay there.  You won't die.  I can't give up on you so easily, can I?




I read back over this, and I am amused by the image of putrified emotions.

I see a tsunami of decomposed hope, aspiration, and yes, even happiness washing over me, filling my lungs with liquid decay and burning my eyes with acrid detritus. I am tossed about by the force of the wave, while bits of bloated debris floats, tantalizingly recognizable, out of reach. I feel like I am drowning, I want to drown, but it's like I'm breathing putrefied surfactant. Through the haze, I can see things, painful things, but I can't name them. They slink toward me through the darkness. I stare, blink once, and they eventually float away, having lost interest in my loss of interest in them. I want them to come back, so I can challenge them, face them, kill them, but when I open my mouth to speak, my mouth is flooded with liquid spoilage.

The wave is building, and I am but a small speck, insignificant against the force of its anger. The shore is many miles away and rocky. As the wave builds, so too I, adding gangrenous dreams and blighted plans to the ruined sea. Pushed and pulled along, under water, breathing this rotten filth, for miles and miles and miles...

Does everyone see how this ends? Is there a happy ending here? A way for me to crawl out of this stinking, rotting sea, cough up a few good chunks of lung and get on with it? Even so, how do I kill the slinkers who hide in the depths of the filth -- or am I supposed to kill them?  Perhaps I am to make my peace with them instead? Thus far, I have refused to face them altogether, or...something.  I don't yet know who my enemies are, or if, indeed, they are enemies at all.  It has been too painful to deal with, and so, I have not.