These Dark Places.

The thing about trying to protect yourself from other people is...that it simply leaves you more time to attack yourself. You would never distance yourself without reason.
Someone somewhere has been an arsehole. Most likely several people. Maybe even yourself...
And of all people. You are best for the job. You know just where it hurts.
What will break you. No...once you get as far as pulling away from others for any extended period of time.
You're fucked. Unless you labour against it...
The battle to love enough the shittiness of other people...in order to love your own.
That's the aim. In my heart I keep on smashing.
Some days,...such as this one. I want to tear away the sinew, the marrow...the flesh, to try and rid myself of where the demons in me hide. But they are me. So I languish here, allowing feverish loneliness to stroke my cheek with lies. Telling me of the horrors that lie outside of my bed. Or this bathtub I sit in as I try and sweat it out.
Don't let it crush you. Don't embrace it. It wants you for a prize. To devour.
But the artistic masochist in me...knows how easy it is to create in the depths of my own destruction.
The dangerous precipices between catharsis, self knowledge, and total catatonia.
The line between so close I terrify myself. I can take myself there, but will I always bring myself back?
The child in me pushes. To find that boundary. To seek my limitations.
The stronger I build myself with each fall, the further I can take myself down the next time.
Like deep sea divers who wish to break records. I see how much I can break myself.
It's an addiction.
For what I discover in the depths has me mesmerised.
Like a lover who knows all the secrets you keep, and tells you how beautiful you are for all your darkness. Your god damned mystery.
The more you need people, the deeper into the shadows you must creep.
There is need to be lonely. It is good and pure with the gifts it bestows. For a time.
But make it a confidant, and it will eat your soul whole. Telling you all the while
"it's okay, it's okay...you don't belong out there, stay here. I'll keep you safe"
 It's a dick. It's all lies.
And you are not a coward, stop letting yourself be one. Romancing the night.
Playing a game with your own sanity.
This is not talent, which I find
In these dark places.
It's only all the ways a soul can break.
Borrowing beauty from the night.