At the End of the Black Rainbow

A Poem by ELCD

Those feelings that come late at night.

I cant sleep.

I could count all the sheep in the world and give them each their own name. But, that won’t make me a good shepherd, and by the time I finish I’ll just be worried that I missed one so I might as well just start over again.

Start over again.

What part of darkness brings thoughts of new life? Does it subconsciously remind us of the time before our birth? The time in the womb, in the darkness, when existence was too much for us to even comprehend - wait, how is that any different than now? And we were calm, and we were loved, and we were...safe. Feelings that all seem so god damn foreign these days.

Like, when was the last time that you didn’t lie awake at night with some anxiety gnawing at your mind like a dog trying to get to the marrow in a bone. Whether it’s a current tribulation or something from our long forgotten past it seems that we will never be allowed to experience relief. Our minds are an archive for our pain and, like the bone, we are all just a few bites away from breaking.

That would be easier, wouldn’t it? If we could just break. To let go of the weight thats been weighing us down for years like an anchor; holding us in this state of melancholy. Just scream “f**k this!” from the depths of our lungs and blow our brains all over the f*****g wallpaper. That wallpaper with the roses spread out across it in full bloom. Mom used to say it made her feel the warmth of spring and new growth even in the coldest times. But, I doubt it will bring much warmth when she’s not able to tell if it’s my blood or the rose petals that’s ushering in spring.

Empty.

Maybe that’s the word I’m looking for. There’s any emptiness, an abyss, growing inside of me that I can never seem to fill. Once upon a time I believed that god had filled it like the book about him said he would. Those were naive times. Times where I was so desperate for some glimpse of hope that my life wasn’t bullshit; that I opened up my heart to some being in the stars. God is a placebo - a crutch - for the weak. A superficial omnipotent father-figure that people believe in like an imaginary friend. Someone to cry out to when they’re hurting and pretend that someone’s listening other than the ceiling. Thanks god, but I already have a father that isn’t interested.

Maybe that’s where it all went wrong. The story of the brokenness in men always seems to start with the father. Though, that’s an undeserving title to give to the man that raped my mother, or the three replacements that followed. It’s funny, I’ve had four men to fill the role of “father” in my life and I still have no idea how to be one. You’d think that the definition would have been beaten into me by now. Whether it was by wooden spoon, by belt, or by fist, but sometimes the words drew even more blood than those. Abuse is something a child should never have to withstand from someone given the role of protector. They damaged more than my body and left internal wounds that I don’t think will ever recover.

It’s a good thing that we were given beautiful bodies to hide that damage, that decay, inside. We put on smiles for makeup and go about our days as if we weren’t the walking dead and we push away anyone who tries to see what’s behind that disguise because it’s easier than saying, “don’t open, dead inside”. We all laugh and joke; pretending it’s all okay. It’s better than admitting that at this point I’m pretty sure I’m just breathing and not actually alive. I can touch my fingers to my neck and feel the blood coursing through my veins from a heart that’s been dead for years. It died the exact moment I wanted it to. The moment my finger touched that trigger and that barrel touched my head. I haven’t been able to put it into anything since.

I was under the illusion that I’d taken control of my depression after my teenage years. That the “dark ages” as I call them, were over, and the renaissance, the “new me”, was here. But there’s something about these late nights, the silence, the darkness, the...isolation. I can look over and see my wife sleeping right f*****g next to me and still feel like she’s lifetimes away. Like there’s no way she’ll ever see me, the real me, and the monsters that lie just behind my eyes.

I can’t f*****g sleep.

It’s the witching hour and my head is boiling over with double the toil and the trouble. I miss the days of youth when we fought battles with our eyes. Straining with every ounce of strength that we had just to keep them open for five more minutes. The days when we were more worried about mom seeing the light under our covers than that we had school in a few hours. I wish there was a way to know that you’re in those “good old days” before you’ve actually left them. It seems like forever ago and I’m only 25 - going on 50 if you count the years that stress has added. I swear to whatever your god is that just yesterday i was cracking open packs of Topps 2007 baseball cards and thumbing through them to see all the players that I hoped to be like one day. Those hopes were torn from me just as fast as the muscles tore in my shoulder. And now, it’s just as useless as the cards and someday I’ll be put away in a box like them to be forgotten and collect dust.

Ha, I could be asleep right now and dreaming dreams that aren't broken, but my mind has to run the greatest hits of the most painful parts of my life. It isn't enough to live it once, my mind has to replay it over and over again. Like a scab it can't stop picking at. I wish I could stop reopening these wounds and just let them f*****g heal! I just want to know the truth. What happens after this? Tell me this life was worth suffering for. There has to be some pot of happiness at the end of this black rainbow.