Hide the Body

Watching an old video of Henry Rollins telling some television audience that being born in a body that functions is a miracle. Still feel the urge to destroy my own. Referencing myself in the same sentence as Thích Quảng Đức would be an insult to him, but it’s something in that realm. Self-immolation is too frightening, too painful, and also too quick - I need to ease into it. My own views are also a little hard to sort out, but they feel more self-absorbed. The pain of the world weighs heavily on my mind, but when it’s all said and done my concern ends up being largely about the emotional anguish I experience as a result of others’ suffering. I know you’re not supposed to admit these sort of things and it’s even possible I’m being too harsh in my judgement of myself, but there’s nothing more American than an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude toward the rest of the globe.

The destruction I desire toward my own flesh and bone is some sort of primal scream I cannot emit. I’ve never been capable of the wordless shout. It feels immature, ‘use your words.’ But where words are lacking or rather they feel out of reach - no order seems to convey the meaning intended - what’s left? I am not sure if I want to explode or implode; I am not sure if I want any of this to be noticed - if it’s some kind of cry for help and if a ‘cry for help’ is inherently a person falling short of death because they don’t truly desire the end of their life or if that is some misinterpretation of the phrase I picked up in my life.

I feel everything. I feel the callousness of the world and whether it’s a result of my inability to believe what we have allowed to be done to our fellow human beings throughout all of history up to this very moment or if I simply feel that the fucked up societies we’ve decided to create and maintain are an affront to me by forcing me to live within what is clearly an evil place and the toll that following the norms of such a place takes on one’s mental health, the feeling of complete helplessness to fix or improve anything even if it’s entirely so I can feel less bad about myself and what I have grown accustom to accepting makes me want to destroy my body. Or at least I believe that to be the case. I am not clear if I want to destroy my body or if I want to not exist - at least not on this plane. I do not want to be perceived. I want to disappear. I am not sure if destruction of my physical being is my ideal method to reach my end goal or merely the only route I am capable of enacting.

Henry Rollins told the audience not to do heroin and ruin your healthy body. I spent years drinking as much as I could get my hands on. Like much of this, I am not entirely clear on all of the details: was I attempting to drink myself to death? Was I simply trying to put some wear on my body for a slow destruction of what I am trapped in? Was I merely trying to feel something that I thought I could reach at a higher state of intoxication and I am not trying to revise history to make the drinking about destruction of my body? As I continued drinking I occasionally thought about how alcohol was poison. I tried to wrap my head around why we drink it at all. With too much in the system, one vomits it up. I guess the same could be said about all food, but alcohol seemed like different beast; drinking a little bit give an effect of impairment. It was hard to not consider that we were poisoning ourselves regularly while trying not to not go so far as to make it deadly - not that the thought ever crossed my mind while I was drinking that I needed to not poison myself to death. On a few rare occasions, I had the thought that I felt way too drunk way too early - sometimes because the sun was still out or sometimes because the people I was with didn’t appear nearly as intoxicated. Though that judgement was rare and my decisions to cut myself actually resulted in a few of my worst nights which I won’t detail, it was never a matter of concern that I might be about to give myself alcohol poisoning until I had already gotten to the point where I could feel the vomit coming.

I want to destroy my body because I do not want to exist in this world created before I got to decide if this is how anything should be. I do not want to exist because existing feels like a passive approval of famines and genocides and so many other atrocities and unnecessary sufferings and I do not want that on my consciences. But I am too much of a coward for anything obvious, anything anyone would notice. I do not want attention. I do not want to cause a scene. But I am also scared to do anything too drastic even out of sight. I have watched all the PSAs and I have bought into all the generic advice and talks of right and wrong. I am too much of a goody two shoes to do something I know to be “wrong” so I work on the edges. I find things in the grey areas to do.

I want to not exist. But all I have to show for it are shirts that don’t fit like they used to and scares I had somehow convinced myself would go away, abrasions I am too ashamed to let anyone see. The damage I’ve done to my body was done with unclear thoughts about what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it. I cannot explain to anyone what they may see because I do not know what happened by accident and what was done with intent and if I still feel that way or if I can still justify these things under a newer ideology.