I am diseased.

I am only as good as my malady.

As an artist, it's nearly impossible to know happiness. For to know it is to cease creatively. It is the artist's ability to find beauty in a cold, dark world. It is my coping mechanism, my reason.

Once, I looked at the world with diamond eyes, excitement bubbling in my mind. Now my view is dull and jaded, everything in a flat monochrome without variation. It is hard to live in such a lifeless world alone.

Misery loves company or so they say.

My mother certainly did. When having an episode all others around her suffered from her cutting words. She too is afflicted and for that I hold some sympathy. It is difficult to overcome the rage and sorrow that comes with the disease. 

Pills only do so much. Some days are harder than others. Perhaps another pill may help, but each day the number increases until I've swallowed the whole bottle. I stare at the pills, I don't even know if a person can overdose on happy pills but I continue to entertain the notion. My body is too heavy and weary to look up the information. Instead I daydream of slipping into unconsciousness via drug-induced coma.

It is not the first time I've had this notion. I have danced on the edge with death many times before. He embraces me in his arms as we sway ever closer to the brink of insanity and despair. He looks me in the eyes and I know the question before he even asks it.

Are you finally ready?

We cease our dance and he holds the blade to my throat. The pressure is firm and unrelenting, I want him to do it because I'm too weak to do it myself.

I always have been.

The natural fight of my body and mind. The mind is too cognizant of the horrors and consequences of living in a world I never asked to be a part of. And just the same I refuse to damn another soul to my torment, to pass on the malady to another as it was bestowed upon me. Yet my body is a different story.

It yearns in opposition to those wishes. The body has a strong inclination to live despite all odds, nature inculcating the desire within us. And yet god certainly has a sense of humor. To create a species that is plagued with a malady that actively seeks to destroy itself in complete opposition with what nature intended. It is a battle I fight daily and more and more it feels like I'm giving up ground.

Friends come and go. This is something I learned many years back, friends cannot truly be relied on because they will not always be there. There is always something that will drive two souls a part, no matter how solid the foundation may seem. Some storms are just too devastating to rebuild from.

Even family can forsake you. They hear your words and pleas for help and brand them as lies. Or they turn their backs when you do stand up for what you believe in. The lessons they teach you growing up, be yourself, is a lie. Be yourself as long as you fit in with everyone else's standards. Stand for what you believe in as long as it's also what I believe in.

Words are merely hollow utterances anyway.  Yet here I continue to throw them around in an echo chamber of my own making. I'm the only one I can truly count on. I will always be there for myself. Except when I'm trying to hold my head under the water against my body's will.

My body always wins.

He smiles and removes the blade from my neck. He sees the fear in my eyes and knows that once again, I'm too much of a coward to go through with it.

"Another time then." He turns and vanishes into the darkness as he always does. His face is familiar and it will haunt me until the day I finally lay my weary bones into the earth. My heart is cold because he leaves with it in his pocket. I know he will be the one to take my life one day. He's already done it once years ago, and it's only a matter of time until he takes me by the hand to do it again.