Bile

I was a watching a man today I wanted to kill. I kept picturing a knife running along the edge of his scalp and down his face, I could see the skin separating and pulling back. I imagined slowly chopping off his fingers with pruning shears. I didn’t know him, he merely irritated me.

How dark have I become?

All thoughts I seem to have lately are negative. Especially those about myself; after fighting to earn self-esteem I am once again back in the red. I hate myself once more, loathing seeps out of my every pore like a thick soup. Why? Why now, why like this, why me, why do I hate as I do?

What is it within me that worms its way back into my mind after I banish it for the umpteenth time, what is it that slowly secretes its way through my neurons and into my heart like a poisonous ooze? It pumps through my veins, heavy like mud and black as tar.

What is its name?

It tells me I have failed, that I am not a hero.

Not a hero.

I haven’t changed the world, I haven’t fixed any wrongs, I haven’t supported my family, saved a man’s life, opened the eyes of the blind, or fought fiercely for what I believe in. I am not a hero.

And that is killing me, slowly but surely it is killing me. Do I dare measure and compare myself to those people? Do I hold myself to their standards? Yes, I do and I don’t know why. And so I am dying on the inside, as this self-hate for my incompetence, my failure supersedes all other emotion. Slowly it taints my mind, turning the world darker around me. Tunnel-vision is setting in, it is only a matter of time before I am focused entirely on my own failings.

So now, desperate, I attempt to extract the poison. Pass me the scalpel.

-M. Powers