May 18

Breath.

Like always.

As you have always done.

All your life.

Ready?

Inhale.

...

Exhale.

The pain. It isn't real. The way it claws at my heart; it isn't there. Doesn't exist. Only in my head. It can't exist. I have never known pain like this. True, constant, internal pain. The dark curls between my fingers is real, as I reach up and run them through the mass. The floor beneath my feet is real. It is not crumbling, nor opening up to swallow me whole, and banish me somewhere which I will really be alone. The emptiness, that was real too. In the space, there was only me. But the emptiness, it was not mutating, not shifting into a physical form that was pressuring me, or stabbing into me, driving a sharpened knife straight through my chest and into my heart whenever the thought violated and rattled my already ruined mind.

It wasn't loneliness. I didn't get lonely, surely. But at the same time, emptiness had never betrayed me before. Not until absence had joined with it.

All was calm. All but myself.

You can do it.

You always have.

Inhale.

...

Exhale.

...

Breath.

The absence. Oh, the absence. I could feel it again. The sharpened knife. The rusted spear. Protruding through me, yet invisible. Cold, and painful. Sharp, and yet, dull. He isn't there anymore, and I needed to get that through my thick skull before it cracked open or turned on me and drove me to pure insanity. When the voice of him took over. He no longer will be there. Not for me. I am nothing to him now. I can be forgotton. I was but an obstacle in his path towards domestic bliss. I have been replaced. The silver band around his ring finger dictates so, ties him to someone else, displays how he belongs to her, and how she belongs to him. How they are each other's.

A rattled, choking breath. The tremor of limbs. The cold damp on my cheeks I have lost control over.

Never before had the walls around me appeared so green, and vicious. never before had they so appropriately reflected the inner turmoil which I wouldn't dare express myself. They loom over me, and I am devoured, dragged in, filled to the brim. But, I will never give in to their will. I will not listen to their deadly voices.

You won't.

You can't.

It isn't real.

it's not there.

Listen to me.

Breath.

I sit, as my knees can no longer support my weight. The sofa underneath my backside is real. I can feel my hands run over it, the leather. It is cold, and unused. The thumping of my heart is real. It is beating rhythmically, sending blood throughout my body, and with it, life. It is lonesome. The fabric of my shirt is real. It is smooth, silk, comfortable. It wants for the strain along the lines of buttons to be diminished, for it to be carefully slid away and tossed onto the floor, classified as useless until morning.

I can feel it as I grip over the spot where I can feel my heart, my blood supplier, the thing keeping me alive, ache mournfully.

The aching is not real. The stabbing knife is not real. The absence is not real. None of it. It couldn't be. The wish to be held; straddled; kissed; never let go again - It was not real. I did not miss him. It did not bother me. I was better alone. I was always better alone. I did not care. These were not things which I yearned for, really wanted, really desired. I never had before, for anybody, and I did not wish for it to start.

It was weakness. It wasn't real. Perhaps if I told this to myself enough, it would be true. At this point, I could only hope as much. This ran through my mind bluntly as I laid myself down, exhausted by today's session.

Sleep.

You're tired.

I care, you know.

You can't keep doing this to yourself.

Breath.

But, if that's true,

why can't you breath without it hurting?