A Worthlessness, Oh God! (Freewriting)
(I must preface this by saying that I’m not fond of this particular chunk of freewriting. There’s not much in here but angst and depression. But we write and we learn, and I want to share the good and the bad. So…enjoy, if you find yourself doing that…)
There’s a worthlessness in me, somewhere. It sifts quietly while I work, while I parent, while I try to love and lust and linger. It sloshes quietly when I adore things, when I try anything, anything at all. It bubbles mercilessly when I talk to people, when I engage, when I laugh. It fills everything in me, heavy and black.
There’s a quiet, agonizing worthlessness and oh God, when I feel it, it’s heavy.
Sitting with friends, watching their mouths move, sometimes I can’t hear anything. Just that black water, somewhere, I swear there’s water somewhere, surrounding something inside me. I watch their mouths move and I try to talk but nothing but that black water comes out. Nothing but water, thick and black and cold, rushing out. No one ever notices, not really. And I think, panic slowly building, maybe my heart and lungs are the things that water is surrounding and, oh God, it’s drowning me. They talk and I suffocate, slowly and finally, I drown.
There’s a quiet, agonizing worthlessness and, oh God, I’m drowning in it.
At home, I try to write. I pull blankets over my head and I breathe, slowly, blocking out all that water. It’s everywhere, everywhere, it gets into everything, it ruins and warps my words. And I can barely block it out but sometimes, in moments of ugly desperation, I write vivid things. Sometimes I write vivid things with too many commas and everything I know about grammar is shoved somewhere in there with the worthlessness. I read it and I wonder how the hell all this fucking water keeps getting into my lungs, maybe I’d be able to write if I could just breathe.
There’s a rumbling, agonizing worthlessness and, oh God, I’m drowning in it.
Sometimes I find myself in love. So viciously in love that my smile threatens to break my face, so in love that I sing cute songs to myself over coffee and tea and bagels. And then I realize I’m a 30-year-old single mother, oh God, and no one wants leftovers, oh GOD, and I suck in so much black water I think my lungs will drop. It snaps in me, it really clicks, it really is such a vicious thing, oh God. Realization has been a general cause of my misery for 30 years, 30 whole worthless years, and to this day I wake up gagging on it.
There’s a rumbling, agonizing worthlessness and, oh GOD, I’m drowning in it!
I wake up wanting to go to sleep forever a lot. I wake up smelling the inside of a coffin, smelling beautifully woven fabrics and well crafted wood, and I feel myself smiling so hard I could BREAK my FACE. I feel my fingers running over satin, feel my body stiff and lifeless, and it feels like something new. But then my eyes open and I look up and I’m home, and I’m awake, and I’ve been given another chance to prove just how pathetic I am. I’ve been given another day to be awkward and lonely and OH GOD, what a worthlessness.
Oh God. There’s…sometimes there’s just nothing but black water.
But I’ve yet to completely drown. I’ve yet to curl into myself, my oddness yanking my body into a tight circle, my bones cracking into dust. I’ve yet to enjoy being anyone else, to completely fail at being myself, or to completely and utterly give up.
Oh God, I get so damn sad. But, in all that worthlessness…I’m still here…there’s still something worthwhile in me, somewhere.
And, oh God, I won’t ever give up.
