Obsolete Shield

I guess I’ve unlocked the door and thrown away the key. That’s a bizarre feeling. But it’s like the pain wheel has found a place to vomit onto now, and this is it. I always tried to protect people, I feared they wouldn’t understand or ostracise me. I suppose that’s pretty arrogant. Why should I try to protect others from myself? I’m not ashamed about any other part of me, why should this one be any different? It’s just another piece of the broken mirror.

Because everyone leaves you in the end. On a plane or on a bus or maybe they live up the road and one day they just stop giving a shit. What’s the point of trying to hold back? If they can’t deal with the piece of the shattered looking glass that’s going to cut their palms, why should they get to enjoy the funky shaped piece that plays distorted and beautiful reflections on anything you turn its face towards? Why should they? What have they done to deserve, if they don’t get the pain first?

And that’s a stupid way to be. Judgemental. Prohibitive. There isn’t some sort of fucking test to pass to be my friend.

I don’t even know how I’d grade it.

My point, my point, my point is that why is it all so filthy? Why is it all so broken and scattered? Inside this head it’s wallpapered with terror and magenta lightning and stinging tentacles. It’s all my own pain. As far as I can tell, at least, others fill my gauge pretty slowly. I bring the tremors on myself and then as I bounce around my living room screaming and punching walls and shaking and crying, I’m just reacting to some stupid perceived slight that isn’t even a thing. Something so tiny as to be less than nothing, not even an issue, and my own colossal pain wheel just overclocks and spins like a circular saw, wrenching its way through my ribcage and out into the world where it ricochets about and slaughters and covers the walls with blood, and while it does it bellows for more. It’ll never be satiated so long as I let it live with me.

And I do let it. I would rather be this way. The difference is worth it, the other times when the wheel is just gurgling away at the back and indirectly powering the factories of my imagination, those are good times. High, powered, tight and ready.

But now? Break it all. Slam your fist onto brick and roar with glee and ecstasy and that primal pain, grab the nearest sharp object and rake it across any bit of yourself you reckon is soft enough to suffer an effect, slam your forehead into the lightswitch with the rhythm of the dark song in your head and say names on the beat, knowing that nobody is actually going to come and help you, because you scare them, and you should, because you’re demonic poison.

Push them to the floor, if they come. Backhand their faces, if they come. Tear out their throats and spit in their eyes and glut yourself on their attention because they are not you, they are someone else, and therefore they do not matter.

Except I could never believe that. Every soul is special and perfect, in twenty one years of time and space I have never met anyone who wasn’t special, except this double helix broken mirror violently spinning crazed destructive wanker I’m piloting in the game we call Real Life. And that’s why the shield exists. Someone has to watch me and make sure the only person that gets hurt is myself, because the others are special and they do not deserve the pain I would indiscriminately hand out. The others are special

The others are special.

The others are special.

I’m just one guy and my smile’s not important compared to that on the faces of the men and women of the world, that warmth and electricity, and the fact is everyone one of you has better people to pay your attention to.

Because I can deal. I can. I have to.

Kedge