I remember his eyes. There was nothing particularly special about them, but they were oddly similar to mine — and what I saw in them scared me more than I could admit at the time. In his eyes, I saw perhaps the beginning of what some might call love. I particularly remember when he left the table to pay the bill. I didn’t know that he had gone to do that but when he came back he had told me that he had already. I remember that I had that urge to smile, but I didn’t allow myself. Instead I had told him “I thought we were splitting the bill.” He smiled — one of those beautiful smiles that stays with you forever. He looked down at me (I was sitting) and in his eyes I saw something so intriguing, it made me uncomfortable yet the feeling it gave me was ethereal. Throughout the whole date, I avoided looking into his eyes because I couldn’t believe someone could look at me and see something of worth. Subconsciously I knew that I would destroy all of that — it was only a matter of when and how. After that, we would talk almost every day. He would call me Beautiful, Love — all these things I’d never claimed I was but he saw them in me. Leaving that date I wasn’t sure what I felt, however I felt something I just couldn’t put into words and that uncertainty destroyed us. He needed assurance, something I couldn’t provide him. Something I hate myself for.

I tried being what I thought he wanted me to be and I lost him in the process. And there, right there I realised that I was the problem. He left just like he came without looking back. I cried that night I tried not to but I did. I think I cried more because I had realised that I was capable of destroying everything he liked about me than the ‘actual’ losing him. His departure was proof of what I was capable of, of how I could unravel the parts of myself he once loved. And I now I know I’m just someone who inspires disgust. Someone when known is never loved but despised.

I have been pondering and thinking about what I am, how disturbed can I truly be to destroy in a matter of weeks, a perception of me he only knew. Someone I had been vulnerable too, more than I had ever been to anyone. But he disregarded that like everyone in my life. He had said he understood me, he wanted me and I destroyed that. I did that, not him, not anyone else, me. I did that. But what I must understand now about myself is that I am deeply unhappy. Everything I touch I destroy, that’s who I am. I’m bad person.

I want to be sincere with myself and with those reading. I hate it here. I really do. I hate the fact that I destroy every good thing in my life. I hate pretending I am fine when I’m not. And more than anything I hate myself – more than I hate this place. When I go I will leave a trail of destruction behind me. And if by some sort of miracle I am remembered, they will remember the harm I caused and my purpose in this world will be fulfilled. They will call my name into the heavens and the sky will roar it’s displeasure because I brought my curse to them and now it’s etched in the wind.

Inside my mind there is a war I’m not ready to fight. I choke on the words that once made me strong. How will I ever get out? How will I ever be seen? Have a right to know, don’t I? I need to know what is wrong, why do I keep doing this to myself? I had something that could have lasted a lifetime and I destroyed it. What do I do after this?

I know the world will forget I ever lived, ever cried, ever existed, and there is nothing I can do about it. My name will vanish like breath on glass—faded before it’s even noticed. I will be nothing. There is just nothing here for me and nothing awaits me. All I feel are the endless assaults of desolation. And yet I sometimes wonder if I could show the world my scars perhaps I could pretend they were never there to begin with. I’m slipping through every one's fingers and my skin crawls at night begging to be where it belongs. I’m stuck here and it seems as though it will be forever but I’m ashamed, I’m suffering and all I can think about is how ashamed I am. So I whisper to God and I beg him to take me with him. Let me be somebody’s daughter somewhere else. Carry my haunted body with you and turn it into dust.

However, aren’t we all suffering? And if we are, how do we get through it? Why do we die before living? A part of me wonders if I should stop whatever I am doing so that I have a real reason to feel ashamed of the thing I am and perhaps escape ( my need to escape overpowers everything). However, I’m stuck in the in-between and the ending will probably remain the same. I will die forgotten and broken. So there is no good reason to fight against what is already written.

This thing we call human experience is the loneliest and hardest thing we have ever done. And yet, I sometimes want to experience it all just so I can finally surrender to not only the fact that there is no way out, but that I had lost myself in the process. Consequently I often wonder who I’d be without all this emptiness and not knowing scares me the most.

At such a young age I couldn’t have expressed my feelings clearly, but in my heart I sensed I’d lost myself in everyone. The problem was that I didn’t know how that was possible but when I had realised that I had left myself as well I understood the gravity of my situation. I had left myself thinking I could then be able to see myself differently and perhaps then learn how to love myself. And I hate that I did that because I could never go back. And I use the word never because I have tried so much to be the person that I used to be, and failed. This failure made me realise that I was nothing to begin with and being nothing essentially means that you can never go back to being what you never were.

And this feeling tortures my insides and I’m left tormented and despised by the very thing I have always wanted. Perhaps my heart isn’t ready for such a trivial thing as love. And having gone through so many sensations my soul has learned the importance of loneliness. And I have seen this come into fruition in the way I see the world. I feel so disconnected from the world around me to the point of exhaustion (to the point of death).

I was terribly afraid of love because I hadn’t been loved yet. I didn’t know how it felt to be loved without it being destroyed by my own doing or theirs. I wanted a love that went beyond any possibilities but first I had to accept the fact that not all of us can be consumed by such a force.

When I was young — well I’m still young but younger than what I’m today, I could taste the possibility of love lingering close by. But I never had the courage to look for it and perhaps that’s my only regret. However, it frightens me to think that there is something out there, something waiting for me. I live in fear but I also live in hope. Hope that one day I might find what I truly need.

If I could choose my last words I would have to be very careful to not sow doubts in those I leave behind because that is not my intention. I don’t understand why I do certain things, I just do them and then regret them. I’m attracted to the doubtful nature of what love is supposed to be like. I do not want to cause confusion with my statement however, I have never loved anyone that I wasn’t forced to. And I don’t mean that in a bad way (but why would I say such a thing if I didn’t mean it) but is there any good way to say this, to make you understand.

I remember the empty dinner conversations, I remember the thoughtful Christmas and birthday gifts and the I love you’s but I never truly felt it (not that my parents never loved me) but I never felt the longing, the need only this overbearing shadow of the things we left unsaid, the things we tried not to feel. Sometimes it feels as though I’m incapable of loving anything or anyone (not my family and certainly not myself). But I often use those words, not because I truly meant them when I had said them but because it is what I know. It was what I was taught to say from an early age. It had become more of a habit than a feeling. I’d used the term so loosely that it had lost all meaning, and at times it feels as though I will never know its meaning —how does it feel to love something? How does it feel to be loved? I need to reiterate this; I love my family but a part of me will always hate them not because of the things they have done or the things they have failed to do but because of how I feel about myself. And is that love if hatred is at its corner? Is that all I have to give? Is this all I will be, someone who cannot love without hatred?

And due to this fact I have learned to attach such little significance to what love is and how it is supposed to be. Doing so I remembered that I’m no longer that girl that hoped for love but a girl who came to despise that so-called feeling. I say this not to invoke pity but understanding. And without this need I do not exist. Possibly after everything that I have said you might not understand however, I’m certain of this we all live and can live without love, but can we live without being understood? Can we possibly exist without that and perhaps I’m wrong, I myself I’m lost within the intricacies of this world. But how else are we meant to truly understand ourselves, if we don’t challenge our perception?

Perhaps my problem is that when I’m lost I look for everything but myself, perhaps that’s why I can’t comprehend such a feeling (such a need).

I’m sure that one day I will wake up and think of what I have just said and my opinions might differ but now I feel it more than I can comprehend it. So everyday I wake up knowing that I will die in a place I have never loved. But maybe that’s the point, maybe life is not all about being loved by somebody else or loving somebody else, but understanding our nature.

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I can’t talk about other people’s experiences when trying to answer this question, however, if I were to bring my personal experience I would have to mention that crying is a sacred expression of our soul. It's a reminder of my own very existence, I exist to die and that realisation is what keeps me stagnant. I realised that my life wasn’t my own but a gift from God and the only thing that was truly mine was the pain lingering in my soul. And the tears I shed secretly wasn’t mine to keep but to accept. My tears were not a representation of who I was but who I am. So when I cried, I didn’t cry because I exist but because I didn’t know how to express myself differently. I had spent all my life hiding behind happiness that I had forgotten how it felt to just exist without hiding, without that constant need to disappear. So as I write this my purpose is to be silent, to be able to find a way to escape all this grief and sadness, and leave this world behind and disappear. Because aren’t we all destined to disappear, isn’t life all about that? Others might say that this isn’t what we were called for, but how are we supposed to know why we exist? I might not be able to answer this question, but I know that we must accept that none of us are really special and no matter what we do to prove otherwise, deep down we all know the truth.

As I have decided to talk freely I would like to confess something, something that does not only scare me but something that is meant to be said out loud. I am convinced that the terror that comes with being human is a by product of our individuality, we all want to be different and that is the one and only thing that we all have in common. The thought of dying has never bothered us, perhaps it did once, but we learned that it was better to disappear than to live and nothing is so painful to the human condition as the thought of never existing. Because to want to disappear is to have existed.

Being human perhaps meant realising that life is just a door meant to be closed after our time is up, and perhaps in another life we could choose who we are and what happens to us. But that's not how life works and perhaps that’s where its beauty lies. In the fact that we are meant to exist to disappear. So when I think about crying, I take it as a mirror to one’s soul. It is only when we are broken beyond repair we remember that we truly exist.

I must also confess that many times I have never known what sadness was supposed to feel like. I hated the feeling of my own tears streaming down my face with no place to go so I forced myself to never go there, to never be in a position where I couldn’t control my tears. This was my way of proving my strength but soon I came to realise that this was just another way of hiding from a world that might never accept me. But crying for me was essentially crying for everything I had never allowed myself to cry for — everything I had been, for everything I am, for every old hurt, for the privilege of my own existence…

So whenever I try to end it, and I have done countless times, I always find myself returning to that memory or perhaps a dream, where I never existed at all, as if I were never shaped form the very dust of this earth.

I have always seemed to have an uncanny ability to connect with others deeply, feeling their joys and sorrows as if they were my own. I cried for those around me but I couldn't muster the same sentiment for myself. I craved love but when it was handed to me I pushed it away. Perhaps this paradox was my curse, or perhaps this was what I was called for. I was called to just exist in everything and in everything I was nothing.

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