The words which never caught me by surprise were only exemplified, amplified by the faces of others. They made me realize reality, real life, whatever it may be, to them anyway, to everyone else. I was confused; the looks of disgust, of dismay, or of disappointment. I never understood how or why anyone would think that of me. I have no real ties to anything but the reactions that lie within these facial distortions, within this cage that language bears, within this monstrous speech reverberating from my esophagus, beyond my lips, curling around any ears within audible distance. If I thought there was ever time, it was only a joke. Worry today, worry tomorrow. These ties to reality are socially bounding, economically bounding, aesthetically bounding, even. Without them, my sanity would be questioned, my stomach would be empty, my vocal chords perhaps of no use.
There was an understanding once, where humans were supposed to have these things called morals, know the so-called right from the so-called wrong. But the life I led seemed utterly devoid of morality, mostly socially, mostly economically, if economics ever had any real morals to begin with, that is. Every day was a simple stretch of time littered with incessant errors. Regretful decisions strewn about the lawn as you fled for work each morning, on the license plate of the car in front of you, in the morning cup of coffee; they were there to greet you at the dinner table, or on your bed, if you were like me, sitting in the same goddamn spot for hours upon hours upon days, so many instances you can’t even remember the last time you did something else real with your life. The mistakes only got worse as you aged; growing and spilling profusely all over your man-made time, without missing a spot. Perhaps it was just the complete lack of confidence, I’ll never know. The self doubt, pity, loathing, the hatred, the misery, the empathy, it was all a communal effort.
I felt as if I could only feel what others felt. It would emanate from within them, would burst through their flesh and would grant me cascading waves of false emotion. The suddenness was always astonishing, an exaggerated, excessive weight that would pummel me, make a raging emotional monster out of me. The instigation would begin someplace deeper, but the foreign feelings would forcibly thrust themselves through my bloodstream, dousing everything in its path with remnants of itself. I use this excuse, empathy, to put a name to these nameless emotions, the ones so intense, yet so alienated, I could sense them but I could never tell why or what they were, who they claimed to be, there was never any reasoning with them. They were the monarch, and I was the peasant.
All of this commemorates, welcomes a myriad of hate. Everything I say, I am, or I do is an act of self-destruction. An explosive action grasping every piece of humanity that surrounds it; it crushes it all, and it reveals nothing but the truth, the unyielding truth, bound to nothing but selfishness, that lags behind the so-called person of morale.
There was morning; and morning was time for my own evangelical speech, myself yelling throughout the condo I claimed was my own with strained vocal chords. Morning was when I’d brush past fifty-four mirrors from my bedroom to the bathroom, and once in the bathroom, I’d glare into each of the twenty-eight mirrors that adorned the walls of the nine foot-by-nine foot enclosure. After my purely aesthetic actions were over, I’d slowly make my way to the largest, center mirror, gazing so hard I eventually appear soulless, a desolate form wading in the universe for no known reason, for no apparent cause. Where my day would begin splashing water against the reflection, though I was never sure where the water would really go. Some days I would feel the water souse my nose, mouth, eyes, and others, I wouldn’t. Others, I would watch it bounce from the glass, or gracefully run across it.
“you are a casted shadow, a shadow who lives and breathes, feeds off of first rate versions of yourself, yearns to be everything it never could be, never would be. Systematically, you aren’t even there, you’ve nothing to contribute, nothing to show for, nothing to be. Never will you be anything but a reflection of an imposter, of a fool behind a hideous mask. The space you’ve taken up with your existence is far from eminent, it’s far from understood.”
Rounded eyes dirty with hazel and burnt gold, so focused they appear to be trembling, so decadent they could be mistaken for something of much greater purpose, my heavy eyelashes quiver. There’s nothing but me right now, so absorbed in myself in a trance-like state of perplexity, but I won’t snap out of it, and I won’t even try to bring myself back to any sort of so-called reality. I run my hand over the long brown hair that protrudes from my pale scalp, thick and stringy. I clasp locks of it in my hands and watch my reflection cautiously. My rounded face with few freckles placed so delicately it seems to have been done by a painter with a life’s worth of masterpiece, each one of them perfect, doing nothing less than accentuating every beautiful feature I posses: impeccable cheekbones, arched eyebrows, angular bone structure, bow lips so graceful it was difficult to believe that anything but eloquent speech would come from them, anything vulgar was completely out of place, and my symmetrical nose atop a fair complexion. Yet I loathe all that I see. Everything from within me makes me glow with an overwhelming sense of debauchery, all of the sadism, all of the hideous thoughts and feelings, everything I fear, it all reflects back at me; it looks me in the eyes, questions me, and drives me to do things I’d never do if it weren’t for this oracle staring back at me, like I was some sort of vigilante. My forehead hits the mirror, the both of us, we become one, and single tears trickle celestially down my cheeks, bending around the corners of my mouth, tapping the sink and scattering themselves about. I’m illuminated by shame, by horror, by victimization. Turning away, following my steps backward, I strip of all my clothing as I slink down the hallway, hardly moving.
“You deplorable coward”, I repeat in my head, “nothing of success will ever come from you. Nothing of this world will ever appease you; nothing of you will ever be appreciated. Become decrepit, wither within your repulsive self pity, don’t expect any sympathy, don’t expect any care.”
It’s not even you anymore, it’s some sort of divinity trying to tell you how to live, why you live, or rather, why you shouldn’t any longer. Standing in the doorway, my esophagus is shaking and I let my eyes once over the entirety of the room: a single side-hinged casement window rests in the center of the room, elegant golden sheers suspending from a bar placed an inch above it and ending an inch below. To the left of the window was a desk made of oak, its contents are inconsequential. The wooden floors are polished; I can nearly see my own reflection. The walls are a rifle green. A canvas of 28x36 blank with grey was leaning up against one of the two ceiling-high bookshelves that a full bed would separate against the far right wall. The shelves were also constructed of oak. Beside the canvas were sets of oil colors laid about floor, sprawled out, making friends with the assorted brushes of fine hair, some of which were stained, some of which were glistening with fresh paint, the colors didn’t compliment the dark wooden floor. The bed was wedged between the two bookshelves, almost as if it was ready to be squeezed out. Despite this, with posture not meant for six a.m., was Alex, perched up upon our sheets of marigold and charcoal as if he were meant for much greater things than this. He sat silently with a petulant grin; nothing about him looked remotely tired. His slender arms reached out extensively for something beside the bed, a recumbent half-empty glass bottle of whiskey.
“I thought we had an agreement”, his lips moved placidly. I could sense the vapidity growing inside him; he’d witnessed this routine for nearly three years now. I knew, though, that he’d never give up.
His voice was making trails in my head; I heard it over and over again in utter iteration. I felt his eyes, though, as his followed mine in a synchronized pattern over to the oak desk whose contents where truly unknown, though that wasn’t what mattered, it was the hangman’s knot swinging two feet from where it was grounded. It made a constant mockery of me; it had this omnipotent aura about it, as if everything beneath it were somehow inferior. With a determined walk, I headed towards it as if out of rote. This was the one time I’d felt blessed with good architecture. I’d hated the wooden cathedral ceilings before, the wooden beams extended across the entirety of the room, five of them. It reminded me of an archaic cathedral. I thought these ceilings were beautiful now. There was a breath against my neck now, I didn’t hear his footsteps, he’d always walked with such an air that made him seem absolutely weightless. The warmth of his palm enclosing upon my upper arm calmed me. I’d lost the intensity of the moment, the tension within me had loosened, and the adrenaline was gone. I always seemed to forget how soothing a miniscule gesture could be.
The scarcity of sanity
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