after life
I
R, I woke up today seeing that you’d sent me an email. I had gone to bed that night wishing I could have a conversation with you- lo and behold! Of course this has always been a common occurrence between us. I only have to think, to yearn for you, to psychically pull on the astral thread that binds you to me eternally and like clockwork, there’s an email from you. The thing about you is, when I call, you come home. Every time without fail! You’ll always have a favored place in my heart because of this. Elated though I was to hear from you, I could not bring myself to respond for a few reasons.
Well, you know.
Given the chance I will consume you whole once more. You seem to have found a somewhat stable relationship and potentially happy future, I will ruin your life if you invite me back in. I am at my worst! Grief, ill health, self imposed isolation, all of it has culminated in worsening the endless void that is me. How bad is it? How bad could I possibly be? Well despite everything sometimes I still think about you when I touch myself. I don’t want to, I never actually want to but I always seem to leave a path of destruction wherever I go, whenever anyone lets me into their life. As much as I wish I could be good, I’d probably destroy everything you’ve scavenged for yourself since I exited your life, and disappear as swiftly and miraculously as I appeared in it.
My African name is Kweku Selassie Vlo. On the surface Kweku means “born on Wednesday” I knew this but not if it’s other appellations. “Typical appellations of Kweku are Atobi,Daaku,or Bonsam meaning evil,devil, etc.Males named Kweku are said to be mean spirited and tenacious” And I’m a lefty on top of it all! It’s all seemed so nonsensical and silly to me thus far darling but perhaps it was ordained for me to be as I am.
I hope you get healthy, I remember you fondly, for your own good, stay far far away. I am no good, I was never any good, be kind to yourself.
II
2:02AM, 2 coke mini cans on their sides next to my bed, various clothes strewn across the floor. Im cyberstalking Shania. I didn’t tell her I’d be leaving, that I planned to disappear and go die somewhere far away but Im sure she knew. Last time I saw her, she came by to drop off my small stuffed purple rabbit, I gave her a box of her favorite candy and returned the RJ the Sheep coin purse she’d lent me a year prior. As I leaned into her drivers seat window she put her hand on my cheek and my heart broke. I kissed her palm and said goodbye. We were never together, but we should have been, or maybe not. I was never able to open my heart to her, I haven’t been able to open my heart to anyone after Yujin, but if anyone deserved it, it was her. Sweet girl, very funny, outrageous sex, infinitely patient, knew how to leave me alone, knew how to let me fly away on my little trips and always come home. Everything I could ask for in a partner honestly. There was one afternoon I returned home from some meeting or interview or other and there she was, in bed playing civ on her switch. It felt good to come home to her. The empty apartment I refused to furnish for the sake of making things easy for the cleanup crew upon my eventual and inevitable suicide felt warm for once with her there. I sincerely should have married her, I sincerely would have ruined her life. I am simply impossible to be with. When I think about her, I see images of deer gently walking through the woods in those lingering last few days of summer when twilight rays would beam into my bay windows. She reminds me of my favorite time of day. If we were together, I would ruin it somehow, and those memories would be tainted. So instead I spend my last days like this. 2AM,2 coke mini cans, etc.
II.5
Lately, I’ve had to pretend to myself that I am already dead through most of my days because that is seemingly the only way I am able to cope with the facts of my reality. My phone wallpaper is a black screen with white text that says “You are dead”. It helps me remember “A dead person wouldn’t care about this, wouldn’t have anxiety about this, etc etc”. I don’t look at any of my internet anything’s because a dead person wouldn’t be able to doomscroll or answer DMs, though ironically I seem to have overlooked the common tropes that ghosts are often very attached to people and places. That ghosts do yearn to communicate to those still alive. Still, it is the best I can seem to do for now. A dead person would have no thoughts and feelings, people no longer have to worry about their friends who are already dead, so I don’t have to feel guilty about being so constantly sick. “You are already dead” when I remind myself of this, I am able to lay completely still in bed, I am able to quiet my mind and all the voices within, there is nothing, I see and hear nothing, I finally know peace.
III
These days, I’ve especially missed talking to Azalea,Courtney, Guillermo,Ida,Muna all of them. I don’t understand this isolation, this exile I’ve imposed on myself. I don’t want to be close to them when Im like this I suppose, but surely it would be easier to be like this with them around, if I was able to be around them. I call my parents, the phone rings twice, I hang up. I’ve done this twice over the last two weeks or so. I am yearning for them, I am yearning for my friends, but I am not all of me, I am not in control, I am not in charge, and an equally (actually, much more powerful) part of myself demands that I be alone. I think it is a part or force dedicated to making sure I don’t make it out of this. Not in a malignant way, it’s just that if I don’t make it, I can hopefully finally know peace. I cannot honestly say to anyone that I believe my life is sincerely worth living, there are so many significant aspects of it that are just so painful, so impossibly corrupted, tangled, that I cannot see a solution or a way out.
I want to call my mom and ask her
“mom, do you honestly and sincerely believe you treated me well?”
I want her to say
“no son, you were my first child, i was still young, and I’m so, so sorry.”
I want it to feel sincere, and I want to believe her so much that it erases every painful thing said or done between us. It’s unfair, but I don’t even expect an apology from my dad despite him giving me his fair share of beatings, chastisement, despite him calling the cops on me for dropping out of school because I was in and out of psych wards so frequently at the time. I just want him to be my friend, and act like he loves me.
I want my little sister to go back to the endlessly cool, interesting, and charismatic kid I raised before the church got its clutches into her, I want us to go to GameStop one more time.
None of this will come true.
I want to somehow be able to afford FFS, or for my face and body to transform overnight so I can finally feel comfortable, so I can finally be myself,I want my family and friends that I lost along the way to understand me and love me still. I wish I didn’t have to shave every day and endlessly peel out ingrown beard hairs so I can stop feeling like Im in an endless surreal body horror snuff film, I want to be able to forgive myself, I want to stop being a psychopathic monster, I want to stop being actually fucking disabled,I want to be worthy of forgiveness from myself, from everyone else, I want to be able to stop harboring such intense hate for myself. Unfortunately the hatred is justified, and I do not see a way out, I do not see a path to redemption, worthiness, to health.
I want to never have been beaten, burnt, molested, abandoned, killed.
I know how it all sounds but Im trying, I’ve been trying so unbelievably fucking hard.
I’m trying, Im trying, Im trying, I’ve been trying for years and years to figure it out, I keep being denied by insurance companies, I can’t get meds, I can’t stop the voices, I can’t get help. I can’t stand up for thirty minutes at a time any longer, I can’t do anything physically intensive, I can’t be a chef any more, so I’ve been going out for jobs that’ll be easier on me but fuck me this job market is insane and unfortunately the only other roles I have experience in either render me deeply suicidal, or heavily favor beautiful, young, fair skinned women. I start school again in the autumn semester, if I get a degree, I can get a decent job and fix some parts of my life but I don’t know how I’ll afford it, I don’t know how I’ll make it through classes with my brain the way it is.Im trying, Im trying and Im now looking down the barrel of a fascist regime, my neighbor’s Trump stickers reminding me everyday that there is very publicly and openly a target on my back . I’m trying, I’m smart, Im scrappy, I’ve always been able to figure things out, make it work, weasel my way in our out of anywhere or anything but Im looking at all of it and this time I am not hopeful. This time I don’t see a way out, a trick I can pull, something I can luck into. Despite that I keep trying, I keep being denied,I keep failing, and I keep trying, I can’t catch a fucking substantial enough break to sort anything out, I keep trying and I keep failing.
I will not make it long enough for things to eventually possibly work out. I simply do not have the time, I do not have the health, the strength, the will.
Im out of time.
Oh, I failed and I’m out of time.
Sorry.
Im sorry.
