The Wayward Warrior

Well.

I’m not a social being. In fact, I spend a great deal of time avoiding the things that normal people do.

Grocery shopping in the middle of the night, for instance; busying myself with fine print or dashing round corners to dodge the handful of other humans that, like me, desperately seek reduced produce as the sun comes up.

Going to the shop has often been the major activity of a day (or night). Often, it’s all I can muster. The familiar soothing tits of consumerism. I’ve used the mental arithmetic of an eight-year-old to compare sizes and prices and now, I’ve bought something. Everything will be OK. Yes, planting herbs on the balcony in the middle of the night will make me feel better. And when these supermarket-chain herbs die in a week, it’ll be a perfect excuse to plant new ones.

Sometimes I force myself to sleep with carbicide. How many pieces of buttered bread can I stuff into my bloated body before it literally shuts down? I lose track as a soft sleepy feeling creeps over me. It’s a damn shame, given how intensely I love and crave health and fitness.

The self-hating masochist in me seems to be winning at the moment.

My blood runs bitter. I am filled with spite and it’s scary. It’s the worst thing in the world. My growing self-resentment turned out into the world like a shield. I’m unhappy with myself and therefore unhappy with you.

All the time, I remind myself to keep a lid on the darkness. I need an attitude change, an attitude change. No one can ever see the darkness that lingers like a cloud over my intentions. (Don’t worry, the silver lining of mania also ensures optimism and compassion, bordering on hysteria.)

But where to go if not inwards nor outwards? How can I expel the darkness? I’m beginning to think I must acknowledge—record even—the dark set before drawing the backdrop of light. So, let it be here (and only here), uncut, inhumane and burning like the application of salt and ice to unsuspecting nipples, the honourable quest to quell unspeakable darkness and to march backwards into the symbiosis of life.

May it blind me!