HOPE AFTER ALL

I have grown so weary.

The pain from all the harms has saturated me.

The wounds are too many.

There are scars upon scars.

My heart has crumbled to dust.

The soulache I feel is indescribable.

My knuckles are stained red from the blood I've shed when I would beat myself up.

I was always my own enemy.

And oh how I hated me.

I saw myself as weak.

The self-loathing went all the way down to my very core.

Like a tumour that had devoured everything that was me.

With no hope for a cure.

My thoughts slowly killed me.

I know I betrayed myself over and over.

I was filled with anger over this.

Which begat rage, which begat fear, which begat suffering.

There was just nothing in me for me.

I never could figure out what my so-called life was for.

Never did I find the reason for me.

Now it feels as though it's just too damn late.

Maybe it is.

Maybe all this is a dream become a nightmare.

But it all feels too real.

Maybe my feelings are lying to me again.

It wouldn't be the first time.

I never could get very far from myself.

My own inner voice was what destroyed me.

I look all around me and I see the desolation.

Everything...EVERYTHING!!!

Was in ruins.

I lived under blood red skies.

I walked on a scorched earth.

The acrid smell of my burning world filled my paper lungs.

I choked as I slowly suffocated.

My life and my world became a quarantine.

My poison slowly spread throughout all of me.

Slowly I sank deep into myself.

Where I lived became a prison then a tomb.

My fate became sealed.

I was damned, I was condemned.

I was forsaken, as I felt.

No one could tell me otherwise.

No one could get close enough.

And I didn't care, I didn't give a damn any more.

No one else cared.

And it didn't matter.

Nothing mattered.

For nothing was what I felt and still do to this very day.

My memories began to fade like old photographs.

The corners curled up.

And everything became just too hard to make out.

So I gave up.

I never could find myself anyway.

Lost somewhere along the way.

Not that I did ever go anywhere.

I was perfectly content.

Prodigal?

So what!

Apathy was just fine with me.

No one cared, why should I?

Then I awoke.

I opened my eyes.

My sight was fogged over.

Then everything cleared.

I was horrified.

I was still living my so-called life.

My feelings were still lying to me.

My emotions couldn't be trusted either.

Of which was I better off with?

Lost in my own imagination?

Or lost in this life of death?

I have no answer.

All I know, is that I'm here,

right here,

right now, where I always am.

Surrounded by my six walls.

Where the darkness was absolute.

Whether damned in a nightmare,

or damned in a dead life still didn't matter.

Unforgiven and forsaken.

God has turned His back on me.

Just like I continually turned my back on Him.

But I cannot help but to feel like I am being lied to still.

God, are You still there?

Can You hear me?

If You are there somewhere, can You save me from myself?

I think I've almost done myself in.

Everything good and alive in me has almost been bled of it all.

I've only enough strength to hold onto what tatters remain of my hope.

And that hope still seems to not have let me down.

Maybe there's still hope for me after all.

I just don't know,

I'm still not so sure.

I don't know where to go from here,

when here is still nowhere.

My living Hell.

I can still see a micro sized shimmer of light.

Is it artificial light,

or is it the glimmer of light left that's guiding me home?

Something I've never really known.

But I am still trying to believe,

something so hard for me.

It's so hard to believe with all this hanging over my head like black storm clouds.

But the little hope I have keeps me going.

Even though I feel I'm not going anywhere.

"Hey dummy! Feelings lie!" I try to tell myself.

Whether it's anywhere or nowhere it still doesn't really matter.

I just want to find a place to belong in a world where I don't belong.

I just want to find somewhere that I can call home.

Where I can finally rest.

My candle has almost melted all the way down to a soon to be a bloody hardened pool of what was once who I was.

I never did know or understand that part of me.

But, then, I remember.

I am still here,

that's somewhere.

That's something,

something to hold onto.

Something that I can call hope.

Looks like nowhere is somewhere.

It may not be much.

But it's something,

and that's everything.

I guess I matter after all.

There's reason and why for my life.

That's all I need to hold on, to hold out.

I can finally believe in myself, I can forgive and love myself again, for the first time.

I have hope,

hope's all that I need.

And that's enough.

SCOTT DAVID BUCKLEY