Bob Dylan- Simple Twist of Fate
It's late and I am tired, and sad in a heavy way. I've spent the weekend with my family, which always seems to tip me back to an older, darker place in my mind. Coming home, I am fillled with anxieties which float free of anchorage or rationality and take me floating with them. The greatest innovation in my life recently has been the addition to my little managerie of a lodger, and after the novelty wore off the inevitable happened, and home began to feel like a place of requrement, and not a refuge. Even the walls seem to make me feel guilty. There are so many ways, it seems, in which I have failed, in which things are not as they should be. There is dust- a cup is unwashed. I am not smiling when I ought to be. A bill has waited a little while unpayed. I have not tried hard enough. I want to start hiding things again, to be secretive, to drink alone in my room and cut again, just to have something whcih is mine, just to have protection. I become suspicious, and wonder who is trying to steal myself from me. My mind feels like a bluebottle stuck in a jar- no matter which way it tries to escape, it ends up beating itself against something, like a chandelier against a cosh, bright and sharp and breakable. I want to run, or I want to hide. I want to cease to be in some sense which I know for sure isn't possible, and the effort not to cut takes almost everything frm me, leaving behind just sinews and a scream. I am reminded again of a passage from Saul Bellow's Seize the Day in which someone prays "Let me out of my trouble. Let me out of my thoughts, and let me do something better with myself. For all the time I have wasted I am very sorry. Let me out of this clutch and into a different life. For I am all balled up. Have mercy."
I feel the absolute certainty that I am not good enough and never will be. I am only half a human.
There is a sense of loss somewhere in me, and a lonliness, a reaching out for love, but I am the unloveable, the untouchable. Nothing will ever make people love me; nothing will ever make people stay. I am not good enough. On the train home the thoughts took the form of hatred of my appearance. I felt it so strongly I cried, and had to huddle in a seat behind my bag, in case people saw me, saw how ugly I am. I can't explain how it feels to know absolutely for certain that you are physically repellant and that everyone who sees you must see that too, to know that everything that is wrong with you is on display, on the level of your skin, for aall to see, and then to be sure that people are seeing it, are watching you and despising you. Their hatred comes over you in waves; you can feel it every time you catch their eyes. I want to tear at my skin, to peel it off, to bite my hands and rend things. I want to cry and be comforted- funny how those two wants come hand in hand so often.
Tired and sad and more than a little bit crazy is how I feel. Sad and lonely. I feel that there is a deformity in my mind. I feel that I have not been good enough. I feel that I have been at fault. I just don't know what I have to do to make myself better, but if there is anything to pray to I pray to it that I will come to know, and then I'd do it, I swear I would. To whoever it is that listens to me I make promises I know I'd kill myself keeping if I let myself go down that road- to work harder, to be better, to become beautiful, to become clever, to try. To work. To be. To try. To work. To be. To try. To work. To be. To try harder. To work harder. To be better. I will be better. I will try harder. I will make things okay. I wwill fix things, I don't know what it was I did wrong, but whatever it was I promise to make amends. And in return... Let me out of this clutch and into a different life. For I am all balled up. Have mercy.
Bed time. The city is around me, and none of this is real. Things will feel better again in the morning, and if they feel worse again at night well then there will be another morning, always.
I feel the absolute certainty that I am not good enough and never will be. I am only half a human.
There is a sense of loss somewhere in me, and a lonliness, a reaching out for love, but I am the unloveable, the untouchable. Nothing will ever make people love me; nothing will ever make people stay. I am not good enough. On the train home the thoughts took the form of hatred of my appearance. I felt it so strongly I cried, and had to huddle in a seat behind my bag, in case people saw me, saw how ugly I am. I can't explain how it feels to know absolutely for certain that you are physically repellant and that everyone who sees you must see that too, to know that everything that is wrong with you is on display, on the level of your skin, for aall to see, and then to be sure that people are seeing it, are watching you and despising you. Their hatred comes over you in waves; you can feel it every time you catch their eyes. I want to tear at my skin, to peel it off, to bite my hands and rend things. I want to cry and be comforted- funny how those two wants come hand in hand so often.
Tired and sad and more than a little bit crazy is how I feel. Sad and lonely. I feel that there is a deformity in my mind. I feel that I have not been good enough. I feel that I have been at fault. I just don't know what I have to do to make myself better, but if there is anything to pray to I pray to it that I will come to know, and then I'd do it, I swear I would. To whoever it is that listens to me I make promises I know I'd kill myself keeping if I let myself go down that road- to work harder, to be better, to become beautiful, to become clever, to try. To work. To be. To try. To work. To be. To try. To work. To be. To try harder. To work harder. To be better. I will be better. I will try harder. I will make things okay. I wwill fix things, I don't know what it was I did wrong, but whatever it was I promise to make amends. And in return... Let me out of this clutch and into a different life. For I am all balled up. Have mercy.
Bed time. The city is around me, and none of this is real. Things will feel better again in the morning, and if they feel worse again at night well then there will be another morning, always.
posted by tattybluetrees at 3:24 PM
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