I Wear The Dead Man's Face

I WEAR THE DEAD MAN’S FACE

Respite.

Relief.

Redemption.

It’s taken me some lonely, quiet years of intensive progress and a dogged determination to feel comfortable enough to even consider deserving these things. I still have doubts. So many. So many bad days where I can feel what I’ve done. I can still hear her screaming in my face. When I close my eyes, I can’t help but note the hurt on your profile, or hear the piercing words that you shot into my skull at 343 meters per second. I just can’t get over breaking your heart.

I’m certain you have moved on from my betrayal.

I have not.

To my shame, the old me would be on to the next one already. Ready to use the next perfect loving woman that is naive enough to think that they would be the one to do it. To make me the thing that I was supposed to be; A good example of a great man. To make me feel like it’s okay to find out who I am if I just take the damned chip off of my shoulder. To help me embrace my vulnerability as a gift and not as weakness. Fighting those normal, HUMAN feelings… I’ve wasted so much time. So much LOVE. I could have done so much for the people that took a chance on me. As I type this, I am praying for the very first time in my life.

I pray it isn’t too late.

I couldn’t feel, and I’m so sorry. For my whole life I couldn’t feel like everybody else. Empathy or compassion. I thought I knew what they were, but I was terribly mistaken. And then it happened, and I felt everything again, all in one day. Throughout our lives, for better or for worse, we all traverse our own major paradigm shifts. You were mine. We all evolve into something else, becoming a product of our environment one way or another. Giving you the self proclaimed worst day of your life. The unending town wide exile that I’ve endured over it. My “friends” choosing to erase me and replace me with you. The penitence. The self harm. So much self harm in your name, thinking that this is what you want for me. It all lead to this.

It all lead to death.

I couldn’t keep looking at him. That spineless, lazy, womanizing piece of shit wrapped in skin staring back at me in the mirror with those pained, tear glazed eyes. I knew. When I promised that I was going to kill myself, I knew it to be true. I just didn’t quite realize how I was going to do it yet. I thought it would be quick, painless and fruitless. Cowardly. Unconcerned with the consequences beyond that point. I thought that was the only way. But, as they say, there’s more than one way to go and skin a catastrophe. So I flayed him. Despite the calls for mercy or the screams for peace, I never stayed my hand. I attacked, and I attacked incessantly. I peeled back layer after layer to find the pieces that I truly needed to cut out. The greed. The entitlement. The fear of vulnerability. The cowardice. The atrophy. Once the scourge was expelled, I was left with something of a template that was actually worth bettering. I was left with the potential that everyone else always saw in me. It was intense, and as much of a positive was it was, it made my guilt grow exponentially. This was the person that you wanted to love. This is the person that you actually deserved. Too late, I’m sure. I was too late, and the guilt consumes. It’s the thing that gets me out of bed, gets me through all of my schooling, my work, my exile. It is my focus, my motivation, and my next tumor to slice out. I’ve grown. I’ve learned that it cannot consume me as long as I keep fighting to be the man you deserved. I will.

I WILL.

I will toil on in the hopes of becoming someone that I can actually love. That YOU can love, even if you never do. Because after all this time, I finally feel as if I deserve to love myself. To cultivate myself into a person that can love and be loved. To bring a light to this world, and in turn bring light to mine. Not without my burden of course. That is a lifelong sentence in these parts. Because, even though I killed the monster,

I wear the dead man’s face.