My Body Is An Empty Home

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My body is an empty home. Why can’t I escape?

I have everything, but why isn’t it helping?

Through fragments of forced laughter and bits of broken promises to myself, I feel nothing. I’m dipping my fingers into the hollow hole and scraping to see if I’ll reach the bottom, a dark place where some enter and few return. I force tears because they don’t come naturally anymore. In a normal person, an absence of tears means the bad feelings are subsiding, it means things are getting better.

My mind isn’t normal.

When my tears no longer fall, it’s not an improvement, it’s a numbness. Instead of the anesthesia coming from the outside in, it radiates from deep within my brain towards my extremities. I’ve made my own anesthesia. A real medical wonderchild.

My eyes fall deeper into my skull, becoming more sullen, and my eyelids curl halfway around them like they’re comforting each other in their lifelong relationship. A response to fatigue, or a calm brace for what my brain is about to do next. My mind and my speech disconnect, flowing further from each other, almost as if I have to hit a switch that used to work automatically.

My brain stops thinking ahead, for it is far too painful and too tiring. With all of this, there is one voice that remains: What if I’m faking it?

Why does that always resurface? Why does it have to be that?

Ah, but it is not seen. In the public eye, I’m just moody and lazy. How could I be faking this vicious cycle I can’t help but repeat? Like a rickety, not-up-to-code roller coaster I had no interest in getting on, I now cannot get off. It’s so simple to others who have no idea. “Just open the door! Turn off the ride!” Yes I understand, but you see, I can’t find the switch and I can’t move my body. It just won’t budge. Any turn could be my last.

The ride goes faster and the darkness that was once below me starts rising like the sea. I accept it, not because I want to, but because I can’t see in the dark.