Paint Me

GREEN

I

I think I’ve been sick for long enough now that it’s become just as much a part of me as anything else. 

Somedays, I thrive off it. I breathe it in like it’s the only thing I’ve ever known. Like I need that drug, that fix, that high. It tastes like shit and burns like hell, but I would drink enough to drown me just to feel something on one of those days.

Of course, somedays, it does drown me. Walls close in on me whilst the room spins and from somewhere in the back of my mind a cacophony of regrets and apologies begins to play. 

Shaky breaths and strangled sobs attempt fight against the oncoming tune but I am helpless. A fragile ball of a thousand broken promises rocking back and forth under whatever shelter it can find. A broken record begging for forgiveness from the bedroom walls.

I’m sorry…I’m sorry…I’m sorry…I’m

nothing without my sickness.

It’s easier that way. To just let her carve herself into my skin. A permanent brand to soother her possessive appetite. My girl. My shell. My slave. Mine.

Hers. I am hers. 

I crawl into bed and surrender myself to her cold, skeletal embrace. Her bony hands send shivers down my spine, her sweet nothings echo like sirens, her body envelops mine; I don’t know who I am without her.

She’s toxic. The venomous bitch always knows what what’s best. Always knows how to push me deeper into my head. Always waiting for a chance to beat me to the lead role. Every night I become a supporting character in my own story. 

I need to get out of my head. I need to get out of my bed. She needs to get out of my bed. I’m sick of sharing it with her. 

But you can’t kick yourself out of your own bed. You can’t split yourself in half and pretend it’s not you screaming out the profanities. I’ve got to stop imagining that it’s not me. She is me. I am my own poison. I want to kill it.

I’m always afraid it will kill me.

I could throw myself amongst the stars, spread myself around the galaxies, lay my heart bare in front of the whole world. But I cannot tell where the different parts of me start and end.

I can’t begin to fathom where the acid stops burning holes in my lungs, where the poison starts beating through my blood or where the shadows end. 

I am afraid. 

I do not fear breathing. I do not fear facing the rest of my life sentence alone. I do not fear being given to the next plain.

Yet, I am so very afraid.

I fear that there will come a day, when the whole of me is consumed by demons so that there is no more of what I used to be. I fear that on that day, to beat the sickness, to conquer it, to kill it, would be to kill myself.