THE COLOUR OF MADNESS
A Blog About Living with Mental Illness
Crouching Liar
Dear M,
Maybe you understand me better than I do, or maybe you haven’t got a clue how this is going to work out in the end either.
I’ve never actually asked you if you’ve had to deal with a person like me before, perhaps I am frightened of your answer. What if you have, what happened to them? Could you save them?
Forget I asked, I don’t think I want to know really and I imagine it is also hard for you to think about. Fact is we can’t save everyone and frankly, not everyone deserves to be saved.
The edge of this cliff top is crumbling and I can feel myself slipping, just don’t know whether to aim for the rocks or the water today because tomorrow is Christmas Eve and I can feel that hard dive into the waves of self destruction rapidly coming towards me, it’s hard to admit but it almost feels strangely appealing right now, the thought of just allowing myself to descend into the madness and escape reality’s cold grasp for awhile.
Guilt is relentlessly scratching like sandpaper on my sunburnt soul, I found out my friend Keira had the absolute shit kicked out of her last week by some bastard she had shacked up with because she’s fucked up and vulnerable. This latest effort to outrun her shadow put her in a far worse place, good decisions aren’t her strong point.
The world has been trying to take her down since she was a toddler but she holds on by the skin of her teeth and keeps fighting. I respect that resilience, it’s not a quality I possess.
Death scathed her with the tip of his sickle this time, scarring her even further inside and out. While I hope the abusive asshole that physically attacked her rots in jail, I know if I am honest with myself that I too deserve to rot for this crime as I am partially to blame.
Good intentions are meaningless when they come from a place of incompetence and naivety, even an encouragement toward personal growth can damage someone who isn’t ready for it. I should have known better, what the hell did I think was going to happen? Particularly when I threw her to the wolves and offered no further support or advice other than to hold on tight and pray for safety.
It should have ended for me long before that particular conversation ever even took place, yet it didn’t. No, I screwed that up too and now my debt is insurmountable.
Death leans casually against the wall of my bedroom smoking a cigarette and sharpening his sickle, he winks at me with his smarmy smile and says with his Southern drawl and a misleading twinkle in his eye “Now why on earth would I ever let such a good employee like you leave me?” Then he takes a long draw from his thin cigarette and laughs his evil smokers laugh. He owns me and he knows I know it.
My dusty regrets fester and circle inside their cerebral graveyard on a crackling loop, over and over again because I’m blessed with this curse of an immortal, yet deeply fragmented soul and most days I want to throw this damn so called “gift” right back at that damn unicorn so hard I shatter its bloodied teeth with the impact.
Somehow I always manage to dodge bullets like a blind ninja warrior, bullets that should penetrate my heart and evict this worthless broken soul from its vessel but instead I survive, a codependent coward masquerading as a warrior; crouching liar, hidden flagon.
Love,
Kate
One Comment on “Crouching Liar”
Leave a Reply to ashleyleia Cancel reply
THE COLOUR OF MADNESS 
No matter what you did or did not do, you didn’t make him assault her. I hope you’re able to turn away from the path to self-destruction. xo
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