Voices

If only it were a bit easier,

To admit you feel stupid—to say you're not the best…

If it were not in my nature,

To never step down, even when the challenge is clearly too tough,

Maybe I would be happier,

Maybe I would have friends,—maybe I could stand to see myself in the mirror again.

Maybe I would remember,

What a true good night’s rest is, or the definition of stress-free,

Because that's all this life has cost me,

Thence far: my memory and ability to see and do what is right for me and family.

My father feels the need

To address me that I'm not alone.

My mother thinks that

Someone else

Has upset me.

“No, no one but myself,” I say,

“I've had no room for anyone anyway.

I thought you might know that,

Hearing you complain I don't escape from my desk,

Where piles of paper, glowing screens,

Growing lists, and written-on sheets

Await me.”

If I cannot do this, how am I to make the world my own,—

A place to live, and a living to loan

To the more needy,—when I feel the worst?

Grades are just numbers, or so they say,

But no matter how I try, I have a price to pay

In mental breakdowns and sitting on my ass,

Wondering how I let childhood pass so fast.

I cannot begin to express how I feel,

How I begin to have apathy, how I have lost chill,

Or how I have lost all sense of myself,

In blurs of passing moments, and lessons.

I cannot recall the last time I got to stop,

Even just for a moment, or just for a drop

Of water, of air, of anything I need,

And I see how it begins to eat at me.

And I begin to see how it eats at the world,

How we've all become savage animals without any doubt

In the motions we take in slitting someone's throat,

Or in stabbing a friend’s back,

Or seeing one day we might choke

On these false notions the world feeds us.

Yet we are the world, and we feed ourselves,

We crawl and climb our ways out of hells.

Mine, for one, is unimaginably quiet, yet unimaginably loud,

Like voices in my head, that don't make a sound.

It's bitter deaf shrieks make me lose about me what's meek.

The voices, none but my own, telling me I am nothing, I am worthless, and unworthy.

The voices drive me insane, drive me to wish to be in front of a train,

Moving ever so closer until they finally stop.

But there's another voice inside me that says I'm a coward,

For even thinking of jumping off a tower.

And this was at the age of ten.

Imagine how I'm doing now, then.

Much better, yet much worse,

Voices there, but no urge,

Insanity slowly becoming anger,

Still containing apathy.

Yet somewhere deep inside,

I long for shoulders to abide when I cry.

Yet no one stands there,

And I am all alone.

There's an end in friend,

But how can I say such,

When there was nothing to end.