1. Erebus & Nausea

 Erebus & Nausea

'Today, I was hit.'

That's what I say when I finally feel something. 

Some-thing that follows me around. Latches on to me like the smell of decay, neurosis - like the smell of my tear soaked childhood bedroom.

It's acrid and all consuming, it stings.

I wish to coin a new term for being 'over-overwhelmed'. Not the type that blows over, the one that you have no choice but to swallow.

The type that has hardened me. The type that threatens me, tackles me to the ground. 

Devours me.

Holds me down so tightly that I don't realise I'm underwater until I'm choking.

Erebus and Nausea

That's what I feel when I feel. It makes my skin all prickly and alien to me. Muting every sound external so that the blood rushing around my head can be bass-booted and put on loudspeaker.  

But, my blood runs cold. It runs and runs and runs and-

I find myself running too. Into traffic, away from home, into danger.

I want to, no. I need to feel something other than the malignance I can muster up inside myself. I fear nothing more than what my suppression can churn back up.

No-thing is more dangerous.

Light's brighten, primal, senses heightened.

My time is now! I tell myself.

And then it stops.

My face like sandpaper, skin so dry plus my eyes hurt and I bet I look horrible right now because I've always been the ugliest crier, in fact, I'm sure of it. 

And then I'm numb again.

Warm to touch and basquing in the familiarity of this 'feeling' but I'm still frozen in place, wondering how I managed to end up here again.

I feel silly. I want my mom.

I scramble to grasp onto the raw art that leaks from I, the tortured poet. But my tears have dried, remember? 

I walk in any direction - not knowing where I'm going but feeling that noose, that anchor grow tauter with each step.

And through the suffocation of self, I can feign being free.