Burdened

No, I don't want to be alone anymore, I can't hold myself up, I can't walk the same old streets, seeing the things I always have. I can't stand the profound loneliness which grates my heart and dulls my senses, cloaking me in misery and turning everything ashen. The constant deep breaths I take to stop the tears will one day no longer be enough, and even as I try to hold myself together, I shall be seeping through the cracks of my own defences. I feel that day is arriving sooner than I had feared, and that it will find me splattered on the ground, innards where everyone can see, where everyone can read the things I kept to myself. And none of them know how it really feels, to be so vulnerable, so small, so tired; so alone. I wonder if they ever feel so alone.

It's like sitting on the outskirts of town, watching everyone as they laugh, as they talk, as they pass from familiar place to familiar place, knowing where they came from, and knowing where they belong, and the realisation dawning that as close as you are, you are not part of that at all. You are the outsider, the watcher, the one that the world passes by, a forgotten face in the shadows, a silent observer who hides behind their veiled eyes. But I'm slowly becoming undone, by the hand of none other than loneliness; that dreaded companion who tortures you even as they pretend to comfort. I was never strong enough to bear this. The silence descends and nothing can distract me anymore from the darkness that's eating me from within.

So I sit down with the lights off, and I wrap my arms about my legs and let myself cry the tears that I've always tried to suppress. Instead of trying to fight it, I let the loneliness fill me, and the feeling overwhelms my frame, the very fibres of my being tingling with the sensation, with the knowledge that there is no one. I'm tired, so, so tired of fighting this. My cracks have turned into crevasses, and I must simply let myself be, broken and collapsed with weariness, succumb to the terror that I have failed myself. Not even my anger can save me now. I betrayed myself by not being who I am, and the world betrayed me by passing me by like I was unimportant. I'd just be another story ending with tragedy. Sometimes I think all we are is tragedies. I shall put myself back together and pretend this never happened, but I shall carry the weight around, my cross, and I shall bear the scars forever. But you'll never catch me in a such a moment of vulnerability, and you'll never know the raw feelings that course through me. All you'll ever get is this, a mere shadow, for I have not the gift to express it in words.