Trying To Explain Myself. in And The Rest.

There’s a hole in me somewhere, a bath with the plug left out, always empty, always drained. An emptiness inside me that means I am always just one push from caving in on myself like a dead tree rotted away through the centre, a hollow shell. I am nothing, always. Always looking for some way to fill the hole, to make me something.

Every nice thing anyone ever said to me or did for me, I hold tight in my white-knuckled palm like a melting snowflake, because I will never believe that there will be another. I long to fill the hole with them, to stuff the ragged emptiness where my self-esteem should be with other people’s compliments like cotton wool. It never works, they melt away as though they never were.

I go everywhere I am invited because every time I am afraid it will be the last time they remember me and think to ask. I need people around me to remind me I am real, without people I am just a void, swallowed by my own self-doubt.

I am the vacant, vodka-eyed Friday-night friend, I’m superficial, only surface-deep. I’m the one on the stage with a drink in each hand, laughing at nothing, I’m the party girl. The only face of me my friends will ever see. I love being drunk, because alcohol fills that hole perfectly, if only temporarily. Nobody ever thinks that maybe I’d like to hang out sober, just chill out and chat, I don’t have friends when I’m sober. If alcohol wasn’t full of calories, and work wouldn’t frown on it, I’d probably just stay drunk all the time. Without it I have no personality, no reason for anyone to want me around.

I keep the rest of myself in the shadows, because I want people to like me, and there’s nothing to like in a car crash. Everyone turns their head to stare at a wreck, but nobody really wants to see the bloodied mess inside.

I don’t understand why you want me to talk about it, like you’re speaking a foreign language, nothing makes sense to me, I don’t understand why. Please don’t feel you have to offer just in case I throw myself off the bridge next time. I won’t, because I couldn’t do that to the driver who hit me, none of my problems are his fault.

I almost want to trust you… please don’t be laughing at me, I can’t take it, I’m already falling apart at the seams trying to hold it all in.

Last updated October 24, 2014