The Pen

Why does one write?

I could write a thousand words, draw enough theories about the relationship between a man and paper. The pen. What moves us to grasp and put down words, and spin tales and stories, or something as simple as 'the cat sat on the mat, the cat sat on the mat' like the days scratched against a prisoner's wall - forever endless.

I don't know why other's write. I cannot say for sure.

Maybe, it is to validate my own existence. A pathetic plea of 'I am there, Indeed I AM.' - it has been true, I have lived without living. I have not lived by my pen, nor do I live due to my pen - it is neither the heart that pulses in my chest, nor the blood that courses in my veins, it is not that essential other of me that denotes that I am one of Adam's children. I am a child whether I am wanted or not. I have not made money by my pen. It cannot be my heart, words cannot be my sustenance. The pen...has been like my appendix. I do not need it, I cannot rely on it, I will one day be put under the knife, dissected like the inevitable patient, at death's door, and it will be taken from me, and in all it's horrendous tumor glory be encase in glass like a faux-foetus in a biology class. Like so many empty words, replayed, showcased - be told, here is where you said things that were not necessary, here is the superfluous, here is the unneeded, the unheeded, the uncalled for. You are not a God to weave stories in your mind, and build worlds on paper. For in all that arrogance, how can it be that I thought otherwise? This is your appendix, bloody and useless and fading ink against paper that time could not preserve. For everything eventually faded. Flesh disintegrates, and my faux-foetus, my unnecessary contribution of words will also be forgotten.

I thought, for so long. That I could write and write and write. Here, was something for a moment I thought meant worth - I was encouraged. But it was only mother pandering with desperate enthusiasm to save a child's self esteem. She said, here, grab your pen in those grubby hands, and write down those words and she built me up and built me up and I could do nothing else. It became me. I lived the way of an ungrasping vessel, my soul was vague - I, watched trees in my mind to dictate the colour green. People of the flesh were tiresome, they could not touch my heart as much as I could bother to touch my own. I looked for friends in sheets of paper, the alluring, the magnificent, the clever and painted anyway I wanted. So...I am an escapist. I don't remember which written vault, in that castle in my mind I left the keys to my soul - or if I even bothered to lock my heart away, for I would not be surprised if my carelessness made me throw the key's into the castle moat, or fed them to the dragon.

I couldn't find my heart. So, I convinced myself it was pulsing somewhere gold and bright, and it must be beautiful enough not to matter finding. I could live with it without it. Isn't that what artists did?

I never finished a single story.

And eventually, years had passed. I had missed everything. No meaningful bond, I was not needed  by a human being. I..had not heart with them. I had become a character in my story in each of our flesh conversations, never spoke my mind because I refused myself to know it. Acted in an automated, half pleasant manner, though I was sure there was a vacantness in my eyes I was so afraid of letting others know yet took so much pride in.

I loved no one. I love no one.

I rob myself every day. Rob myself half eye blind - think myself grand and wretched, enthusiastically brilliant yet depreciatively worthless. My moral compass flips out of control, I will never sin out loud, but know that nothing would stop me. I could - but I can't. I don't trust myself, because I know I can trick myself.

I write. I am an escapist. Worst yet, I am that failed escape artist that went down like a bird with a fractured spine - I did not die a merciful death, but am left. Body unmovable, useless, put on a sour life support simply for sake of being alive, and not need of living.

Food tastes like ash on my tongue. Yet, I am gluttonous for it.

I don't remember the last time I took a drink of water.

I cannot forgive myself, yet I cannot correct myself. I love as easily as hate, and so cannot be called to do either, neither. I am not honest. There is a lie in all I do.

And yet, people do not move me. Stories do. I weep, I cry at reunited families after an age of war amidst a roar of Beethoven symphony's and scripted lines and on cue smiles, because I have never finished a story - i have never accomplished. And I miss my heart. Where has it gone? Did it fly away with god, when I abandoned him? Did I throw it in the moat? Did it disintegrate, did I ever have it? I cannot love, so I told myself that I can have understanding. But the flexibility of it has as much worth as the street corner two penny whore, who bends her medulla oblangata for any notion or pretty thought, anything to give that seeming allure of substance.

I want help, but I know no one can help me. Because I endanger no one, I am not a collateral damage case waiting to happen - I am simply a flailing girl, who thus there is no consequence in letting flail. I want to turn to god, but fear my own fickle faithfulness, because I have cheapness in faith, no matter how I believe my God true, I think I mock him when I pray, that I insult him when I try. Because we are the broken family, and my lord knows my sense of faith is as faithful as the beggar's who eats until his fill is done then leaves the home and goes to brothels until he feels himself decrepit enough to come back for that temporary fix of salvation.

Oh god, my prayer mat gathers dust on my shelf. I have not prayed in what feels like years, I lie that I do, I nod my head to the faith of ours, praise them for their loyalty and feel envy. I don't deserve you, and every word I speak seems blasphemous so I will expand no further on the topic for my fear of you. Sometimes I feel I fear you more than I love you, like my parents whom I fear more than I respect. I put faces for them, and airs that proclaim 'Yes, today., Surely change, my ways surely shall', like a staged black and white file with little art but so much rookie enthusiasm.

I am the aging girl, who does not know the difference between Neverland and the world outside. Who has been dragged out kicking and screaming, and oh god, weeping for youth, I have never known youth. I cannot know youth. And I cannot have even the reprieve of knowing God,oh my faith, where did it go? I miss it so badly, there is a scream of pain in my lungs that no music, on no art can erase. Love. I need no romantic notions. I want that love. I want to love my parent. No more feel as the cancer in their throats, the obligation child on life support, the eccentric yet wretchedly going nowhere child. Who believe in me, because they must. How can they not? I am their blood. They are obligated to love me, they cannot abandon me until they must abandon me. And the day draws near, and I must cut myself off, but I coward, am. I can't. I'm selfish. I need their false love, which in it's potency is not false, but in its purpose. Because they can't feel as if they have failed.

I am Peter Pan. With the upside down smile, and no lost boy's on my heels. I never had the presence of character, nor the care to command loyalty. Friends. I did not love and cannot be loved. I am as fickle as the Autumn skies, or worse so, because autumn has a semblance, at least, of beauty. And I will never be beautiful. I shall go a Easter egg hunting for my heart and soul. I stagnate. I cannot sleep, and I cannot wake.

I read out loud my words because I have found familiar the sound of my own voice. It is the only one that knows me - yet sometimes it doesn't. I fear. Yet have delusions of bravery. I am a coward, yet dream of heroes bursting through the night and lassoing moons on golden rope that spins the air to cinder, masked bandits and bands of saviours. The protagonist of every soul thumping, heart racing story. I give false injections of a synthetic heart into my words. No Doctor can cure me. I don't wish to die, I know I cannot be cured. I know to die, would be almost certainly a fate deservingly wretchedly burning for me. I am frightened.

I can only wish to be put to sleep, or live like a hermit in the mountains. With bread and water. And no person, no human. Because in every eye I see my own reflection, sardonic and lacking and forever false. I am wretched. wretched. I must leave, I must be forgotten, erase me from your mind. Leave my words like an epitaph on a lost gravestone.

I write? I write because my words, at the very least, have the illusion of beauty.

And that is as close to potent soul as one will ever get from me. It is not much, but it is all I can offer me.

I wish to change. I wish it not. I wish to change. I wish it not. I doubt my ability to do so. Yet know the possibility that it is there. But I have tried, and I am tired, and I don't deserve to pity myself, to live in my own world. I tried to play God, as several writers do. I wasn't very good.

I lost life. It passed my by. I missed the vital train, and skipped years that I needed. I am a thirteen year old in a nineteen year old girl's body. I need to get out.

But I fear the gun. I fear the day of judgement. I fear. I know others have felt pain of the kinds that I cannot even imagine, that my naivety could never survive. I feared growing up and now I can't. I will never be wise, only give the appearance of being so. I will never love. I will always doubt.

I want to change. I want faith, I want to be saved.

But I am not needed, who will save me?