I’ve grown accustomed to my own lack of patience, pushing aside the reality of my short temper by hiding behind a mountain of excuses, like my insufficient sleep schedule or my diet of razor blades and a nightly bottle of pills. But let’s break that down to it’s pieces, shall we?

My sleep isn’t so much a lack thereof, but a world of nightmares that makes nothing feel like real rest. Every wall is a mirror, and my whole body is covered in bright red scars, and everyone I’ve ever known is watching me and walking by and offering help, offering hands and tissue paper and tears and so much pity that I can’t help but feel like the smallest person to ever exist, and I know it’s a dream because I’ve been so good about never talking about my scars, just cat scratches and kitchen accidents, but even knowing I’m asleep doesn’t help, and I’m stuck sitting in real time, trapped in my mind, forced to live out my nightmare of having the world see me as cut and broken as I feel, made all the more real by the knowledge that if anybody did happen to see me with my shirt off, that this dream wouldn’t be a nightmare at all, would it? If anybody did see me, talk to me, have to interact with me, they would see, and find out, and ask so many questions I am ill-equipped to answer, so I would cower into a corner and cry and be inconsolable and God, I don’t want to put anybody through that, having to watch me break like that, never again…

So my sleep acts as a reminder that it would be better, so much better, if I just kept my mouth shut and stopped pretending I’m ever going to be okay, because scars don’t lie, especially as new ones keep popping up, so having to feel nothing but terror and shame, those are feelings I have earned. I used to avoid sleep to avoid the dreams. Now I give up and let the dreams take me, and wake up in a cold sweat, dry throat with blood-shot eyes, and I let my terror slowly fade as I realize it was all a dream, and I cry, like a pathetic fool, until I am all dried up, not a tear left in me, not an ounce of strength, and I let my head hit my pillow again, let my body fall against the warm sheets, feel the sticky spots against my bare arms and don’t even flinch because of course I know why my sheets are sticky and why I only buy red colored bed sheets and why falling asleep won’t be restful and why I still have to, because at least in that hell I can tell myself I’m not actually hurting anybody, right? At least I can’t hurt anybody in my dreams…and that always, it always leads back into the same realization…that I could disappear and never hurt anybody ever again, not myself or my family or friends, I could get to that point, be my own hero, save myself from it all, right? It’s not me being selfish, it’s me saving myself, right?…