I am so sad right now. I don't know why. It's a feeling that's been creeping up on me during the past two hours. And now, as I sit in the darkness by the sink in my friend's kitchen, because that's the only place nearby where I have a phone outlet, I am close to tears. They keep welling up and my nose starts to tingle and just as I think I may actually cry, for the first time in months, they leave me again.
I feel empty. I feel black. And I'm only writing because I feel just how I felt the first week that I moved here, when everything felt utterly, utterly hopeless and I didn't know what to do. I'm writing because I'm scared, because I was pushed to the brink of myself then and I feel I am close again now.
I don't know what's wrong. But something is.
I don't think I can handle anything anymore. I need to disappear. I love C.S. to death. More than anyone else I've ever known. He is my world, he pushes and holds up more of me than anyone else ever has. But I can't take it. I'm killing him. In my weakness, I'm killing him. And he's going to read this later and not know what's wrong and ask me over and over what brought this on, and I'll say, "oh, it was a product of the moment," but it's not. I've been feeling like this every day since I met you, baby. Every day since I met you I've wanted to scream and tell you, "this is insane, I can't do this. It isn't going to work out." And then you come over and kiss me, and it's just gone. All the worry, all the doubt. It's not there.
But you can't kiss me now. You can't hold me now. So I'm left alone and all there is now is burning. Something's wrong, so wrong with me. And I can't subject you to it baby. I love you and I'm ripping you apart and you'd sit there and fucking take it if I let you. But I can't anymore. I can't put you through it. Not when I'm frightened to undergo the pain myself.
And it's me who lives in this shell all day long. It's me who hears my voices, the conference room inside my skull. It's me who has to listen to this constant chit-chatter of fucking words and syllables all day long, every moment, even when I'm asleep I'm force-fed someone else's opinion. Constantly. It's me who's so fucked up that sometimes I don't know which me it is who's talking. What name I've given myself to sort things out. I can't name them for my sake. They're all me. All Joshua. So why do they have names? Why do I give them all constant, gaping lips?
I love you so much, mon petite ange. You are my sky, you are my stars. I would not have survived this much if it hadn't been for your hands behind me. But at what cost? Yourself. You're saving me by sacrificing you. And I can't allow that. I can't watch that happen to someone who's wakened the frigid parts of me.
Kent told me once that he was frozen before I came along. Now I know what he meant. Sometimes it all hurts so bad that the only way to save yourself is to lower the thermostat. But you came and you brought those parts of me back to life, in a way that I never, ever expected or wanted from you. You were just there. Unasked for. Alive. And you changed me. You are worth more to me than anything else.
But I have to let you go. Because you will kill yourself for my sake if I don't. You won't understand you won't understand but maybe you will. I don't know. Forgive me my insanity. No, don't forgive it. You've already put up with so much. I don't know if I'd even stay if I didn't have to.
I love you. I love you. This won't make sense. And maybe it is just a product of this dark crying moment. I don't know. Forgive me. Mea culpa. Parce mihi domine. Because no one else has.
I need to hear some sounds that recognise the pain in me.
8 July 2003 at 3:48 am | No Comments »
introspection
