On the empty page I write my heart out, marring it with my words. They form an intricate web of lies that I spin with my fingers to draw you in. Reader, I don’t want to lie, but I fear that it is in my nature to. Spend too long leaning on metaphors and what is real and what is false turns strange. Everything is poetry now. The way I cringe away from fear and pain, hiding in my comfort. The way everything tries to pull me out. The way the world won’t wait for me to finish my begging.

Spite and Self-Loathing are what drive me forward. I hate them as much as I hate myself.

I wish I could write something fantastical, but the only thing I can show you is the shattered remains of my heart. Don’t look too deeply, but look too shallow and you will find nothing at all.

This is a story about a river.

Where the river goes, I follow.

There is no plot, only my spite and self-loathing like slave drivers. And the shattered remains of my heart.

The Captain, the Poet, and the Boat

There is a river the color of rice. The Boat was not a freighter, not a cruise. It was a simple wooden vessel, steered by a single oar by its Captain.

The Captain was driving the boat along the river when he was hailed by someone coming along the coast. This person had a cloth bag settled around his shoulders, and his hands had pockmarks for pens. It was the Poet.

There is no need to write this conversation. The Poet simply stepped onto the Boat.

They set off along the river as the sun reflected off it.

The Poet frowned. “I want to write a poem, but I can’t seem to make one come to mind.”

“Don’t, then.” The Captain replied.

Nodding, the Poet realized this was perfectly fine. He did not have to make a poem to be called a poet, the same way the Boat did not have to be on a river to be a Boat. He thought about it a little more and wondered if a Captain would still be called a Captain without a Boat. “Would you still be a Captain without a Boat?”

“Yes,” the Captain said, removing the pipe from his lips. “As long as I call myself a Captain, I am a Captain.”

That riddle solved, the Poet crossed his arms behind his back again and went back to doing nothing.

What have you learned from this short story? Absolutely fuck-nothing. I didn’t have a single motto in my brain when I wrote this. I just fucking wrote to escape. What you interpret is yours - indeed, the story is mine, but your interpretation is solely yours, yes?

Someone is screaming outside. I hide in my room, writing.

The Closed Door.

There is a closed door in my house. Every time I seek to pull open the door, fear grips me with such a tight grasp that I can’t bring myself to turn the handle. I am frightened, shaken, and filled with some sort of anticipatory dread. I prepare myself. I drink water. I do meditation exercises. I write. I write. I write that there is a closed door in my house, as if I had a house, as if I had a closed door.

Do I have a closed door?

I write that the door is open. The door remains closed. I go mad. My thoughts scream and jump off the brain onto the page. They are too loud. The music drowns them out. I want to go mad. Maybe if I’m mad then this will all make sense. I don’t want to go outside. Am I inside or outside?

My words are crude and ineffectual, but is this just a lie I’m telling myself? What if I’m good? What if I’m not? Is there a point?

I’m terrified. I’m terrified.

I can’t open the door. I have opened this door before. Someone will open this door. From the inside? From the outside?

I lock the door. I open the door. I write everything out but it’s not enough. Will anyone remember me? Is this a suicide letter?

Nobody knows what will happen. Everybody knows they will die. Entropy will end everything. Does it matter? Doesn’t matter.

I want to go insane because then at least the world will make sense.

The world is insane. Is that it? Is that why nothing makes sense?

I want to escape. Not through that door.

Sounds of spoons on plates enter my ears. Am I hallucinating?

What does this story tell me? I want to go insane.

Tree.

There is a tree. The tree is not mine. It has been here since before I was born and will be here after I die. There is a lightning bolt. The tree is gone. I want to cry, but when I close my eyes all I can see is a white figure where the tree was. Is the white figure the tree? Or is the white figure the ghost of the tree? Or is it a memory? Is it where the tree died or is it where the tree lived?

Does it matter? Does anything even matter? Does anything even make sense?

Maybe I’m going at this the wrong way. Maybe nothing makes sense, ever, and trying to make sense of it is what is driving me mad.

Do I want to live like this or do I want to die? Either or. Nonsense. The folly of humanity means they want to see it black or white, extreme to extreme, when the truth is that everything’s melded together, grey. And. Am I going to an extreme by saying that everyone wants to see it extreme to extreme? When did I even say ‘everyone’?

My thoughts are too loud. I have a sudden urge to eat my fingers.

Outside the door, people are talking. I don’t want to listen. I don’t have to listen. I can’t listen, because I can only hear them, they are too far away for me to understand their words.

I want to cry but I swallow it down.

This act of swallowing it down will just kill me. I want to let it, because I don’t want to get out of this box. I just want to go away. No. No. No.

Am I not worth you? Am I not worth living? I just

What do I even want?

The Void.

There is a void. I fill it with my words but they don’t mean anything. I want to escape. How do I escape. I say that ‘there is a door’. There is a door. The door means nothing. When I open the door there is just the void on the other side. Do any of my choices even matter? Am I choosing that the exit of the door is the void or was it already chosen for me? I close the door. I don’t open the door. I don’t want to know. Knowing is terrifying. How do I escape if I do not know?

I rather die here than open the door.

Don’t talk to me today, I want to say, but everyone tramples me. I have no control. Wrong. I have control, but to exert that control someone else is hurt. Is my comfort

Am I better than

Who are we to judge importance?

I want to

I want to

I have to

Nothing matters?

I’ve written more today about my self-loathing than I did on my fantasy work in the past few fucking months. I want to cry but I don’t want to cry. Maybe I should cry. In perfect fucking English.

I’m going to make mistakes anyways. I’m going to die anyways. Maybe I should just die today and get it over with.

Everything just ties me down and ruins me.

You know, they say that, when you die, they give you something you can’t give up so that you won’t come back?

It would be easy for me. I would just have a room all to myself, no need to eat, drink, sleep, any natural desire, just writing. I would never feel like leaving. I would post things online and everyone would just shower me with praises - I could never give them up.

There is a thing known as the ‘backwards law’. The more I chase something the worst I get at it. The more I try to feel happy, the worse I get.

Maybe the more I try to improve, the worse I get. This is some sort of self-defeating purpose. I am the lens to which I view the world. The world shapes the lens? The world shapes me.

I don’t know what I even want to

I know what I want. I want everyone to leave me alone. Please, just leave me alone. I don’t want to do anything, not even for you. I don’t want to eat, I don’t want to drink, I don’t want to sleep or piss or shit or die.

Except write.

Leave me alone.

I am full of hatred towards myself. I unlove myself. I look at myself in the mirror and I feel nothing, but I feel it in its entirety. This hollow void that wants something but I’m never going to give it. It will be satisfied for a few moments, and then it will be hungry again. I don’t want to be hungry, who wants to be hungry?

I can’t change it? Is that what I really think? I can just leave, but

What is worth losing? Is it worth losing things I took for granted for something I want?

What if something I want is escape? What if I just want to leave and not look back? What if I don’t want any of this? All of this, tying me down, I just want to go. I just want to go.

Ropes.

My mother ties a rope around my neck. My father ties a rope around my chest. My sister ties a rope around my wrists.

I look to my friends for help, but they do nothing because I don’t reach out. One moves, and I want to sigh a breath of relief, but all they do is just tie another rope onto my neck. I am unbreathing.

I smile, because I don’t tell them anything. So they don’t say anything.

It’s not worth telling them to take off the ropes in return for them not to have any rope. They don’t need the rope. They don’t know they have rope. For me to tell them to stop using rope, who am I to tell them? Who am I? I’m not worth a single one of them. Am I not a person?

You look happy! Your shoulders are slouched and unlevel. I feel nothing.

Maybe this nothing is pain.

My thoughts are so loud, so, so loud. I can’t fucking drown them out.

Outside the door, I hear nothing. My door? As if. Nothing belongs to me, not even my flesh. I will die anyways, and vacate this body. This disgusting everything, this disgusting reality. I wish I could give it up. I could give it up. Is it worth giving up for something I don’t even know I will continue to want?

Right now I want it so much, it’s like being under water. There is no lifeguard, there is just me. I used to hold my breath and feel cold. I used to feel what it was like to sink.

Now I am sinking. But my memories are blurred. Maybe this isn’t sinking.

I burned myself before, taking out bread from the toaster. An ugly mark on the top of my fingers. I look at my hand. There is no longer any ugly mark there, but it lives on in my memories. Before I jerked my hand away, I didn’t feel anything. I had to feel something, otherwise why would I move my hand away? Only feeling the pain after I moved my hand away. Did I feel the pain when it was burning, or after? Did I feel nothing when my hand was burning?

I don’t remember what it was like to burn. Maybe it feels like this.

Harming. I’m harming myself. Oh, they don’t see it. They don’t see how often I’m dying, bits of me being swallowed by myself. I am in pain every single day. Leave me alone. My thoughts want to escape.

I check my word count as if that is what matters. I have written so much, but it’s not as much as the amount that I have cried. There are more notebooks, more words that I have written down, more than this. Does that matter? Does this matter?

Shouts from outside my door. I am scared. I am weeping internally. I am bleeding, internally. Leave me alone. Go away. I am stressed, but looking at me you wouldn’t know, would it? Is stress even a good reason for you to leave me alone? Do you have to listen? Is stress just an excuse? I feel like I’m going tof uckgingnjr explode. My fingers slam the keyboard. Is it fury or is it fright?

Someone leaves a game I’m in. They don’t bother reading, that the game is already coming to an end. Or maybe they read and left anyways. I wouldn’t know. They joined late. Does that matter? I joined early. Does that matter? Working for a day and I get the same amount of money as someone working for an hour, maybe less. Does that matter? Does anything matter, when we’re all going to die off one by one, alone? Anyways?

Who cares? Do I care? I wish I cared. I wish I didn’t care. I wish I could. I already can. I am caring, but maybe caring is killing me. Maybe caring too much is killing me, but maybe not caring means I wouldn’t feel pain and wouldn’t move my hand away, wouldn’t surface to breathe. If we didn’t know that we had to be in the air to breathe, would more people drown?

Go away. Go away. Go away. The music drowns out my thoughts. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? All questions, why would you want to collect questions and not answers? What good are answers without a question? What good is a question without an answer?

Stop. Stop. I don’t want to think anymore. Leave me alone.

More shouts from outside the door. Is there a fire? Does it matter?

Leave me alone.

I would rather die.

There. There is the truth. I would rather die.

Leave me alone.

What am I even writing? All these things alone, would they make sense? Now that I’ve connected them, they don’t make sense. Am I the cause? The words suddenly seem foreign, the message stranger.

Screaming, internally.

This is the breaking point.

If the music doesn’t end, can you even call it music? What the hell am I even saying? Noise is noise, just your interpretation.

Like my word count even matters.

Is this even a story by this point? Story of my life. This snapshot full of loathing. I loathe myself. Maybe if I say it enough, I will. Love myself.

Say it fast enough. Say it with me. I. Loathe. Myself. I. Loathe. Myself. I. Loathe. Myself. I. Loathe.

I loathe myself.

Love me. Love me, please. If I can’t even love myself, how am I to love anything else? Unloving. I unlove you, so unlove me too. Or are you unloving me, which is why I unlove you?

There is no mirror in this box. If the cat can’t see itself, does it know it exists?

Does that matter?

There is no poison in this box. Wrong. There is poison in this box. Poison is just a matter of dosage.

In here there is loathing. Is that not poison enough?

Let’s just get this over with.

Hello, freedom!