Paid For Pain

0.18AM it is, and I'm determined to finish off this writing session before I hit the bunk. I'm nocturnal anyway, as you already know. James Blunt is singing in my earphones that he's gonna get sugarcoated tonight. I wouldn't mind lying on the floor there as well with some nice substances making my head all airy. I wouldn't mind being relieved of pain.

When will we be paid for our pain? Rocco asked the question, here's my now 0.34AM attempt to answer it.

Reply: Will we ever? Who will reward us for setting ourselves on fire? We do it because the pain makes us feel present. I rip the skin off my lips as my mind drifts, and every time I'm drawn back into reality with a bang. My quivering, broken lips tell me I am a quivering, broken person. They tell me that I am still here, that I am alive. I wish I could say it made me feel at ease. I wish that the needle shot through the surface of my palms reassured me, and told me it was worth to cling to it, that it was worth to fight.

But it doesn't.

Johnny Cash sang:

I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real

That's me, and that's Rocco. Maybe we aren't your conventional ones. We don't bring out razorblades. We haven't yet made any serious attempts to take our lives. Of course, that is because we fear to die. And while we fear to die, we do what we can to feel that we're alive; to feel that we are more than simply mannequins, dancing to please the rest of the world. We bite our fingertips, rip the skin on our lips... force needles through our palms. I drown myself in misery, drown myself in alcohol, only to wake up from dreaming of demons and ghouls. Dreaming of blood, death. Dreaming of everything that scares me. Sometimes, what I dream comes true. I dream of meeting an ambulance with sirens on in the opposite lane, at a certain spot on the road to work. The next day, I meet that ambulance, at that spot.

But you're not here to listen to my superstitions, are you? You are not here to listen to me say I'm semi-psychic. Because it sounds ridiculous. Because we are sane and rational people, because I just argued a perfectly logical argument with myself and my inner voices.

But I'm an artist, and a poet, and a writer. An addict, to many things. And I never once said I was rational.
POET in the PONDERING JAR
PS. To my Blue Dragon I send my deepest love tonight. DS.