nothing quite

there's nothing quite like being rung-out. when your body finally starts reflecting the bitter raggedness that exists on the inside, when thoughts, feelings, emotions start manifesting themselves in dark circles under your eyes, harsh lines at your temple, and harder ones at your mouth where it curves perpetually into a frown when no one is around.

there's nothing quite like being alone. when no matter how hard you try to reach out for people, the moment they're gone echoes like a thunder-cap in your head, sounding over and over and over again warning you of oncoming storms and lightning. you know then, that the rain will start and you'll wonder anew what it'll be like when the stress is gone and you can breathe without stones on your chest and ice in your heart.

there's nothing like knowing that, deep down, something is wrong. that the anger and frustration and wild wheeling feelings of disaster aren't just emotions that will go away when the winds die down, but ones that'll linger there, deep in darkness, until the troubles arise again and you're struck with the feeling of vicious violence and desolation. you'd do anything, then, to trade that feeling away.

there's nothing like wanting to slake the thirst for life through the delicious bite of pain. when the thought of bitten lips and shoulders and snarled words against hot skin, the thought of hissing frustrations, imperfections, through cracked lips down a sloping spine, lusting for the feeling of being alive in the most animalistic way, might find you some sort of temporary salvation. you'll do anything then, to feel what it's like to live through the breath and bones of another soul, to feel what it's like to live within your own skin.

there's nothing quite like knowing your life has been fucked up and screwed over, that no matter how hard you try to fit the pieces back together, they keep crumbling apart into smaller and smaller ones until you're drawn out and no amount of exhaustion can keep the words inside your head from whispering that it's your fault your fault your fault over and over again. because where it counts, you know it's true, that the perceptions, the ideals, the feelings others have for you exist because you, and you alone, helped create them. and you know, deep down, that when they leave you that you are the primary and only cause.

there's nothing quite like knowing that, in the end, you push everyone away. that when your depressions and worries grow so thick and weary that the silence of the woods you've tended slowly over time to shelter you has grown so heavily embittered that no words can pass through the barrier, no physical body can weave its way through the branches, the trunks, the roots that sink deep down into blackened soil. you're just suddenly stuck there, in the center, wishing you had the strength to knock down the trees you've crafted that block your view of the sky, wishing somehow that your sanctuary didn't also have to be, at the same time, your prison.