Hurl

Vent, sorry.

I depress myself on purpose because I know I need it. Because if I don’t do it, no one else will. And I tell myself I deserve it. I need to do better. I have to be better. I can’t stand the version of me that stares back in mirrors and reflections—creases, scars, the tired lines that don’t go away no matter how much I sleep. Ugly. Unforgivable. I need to be better. I say it like a prayer. I need to stop. Stop what? Everything. All of it. The cycles, the patterns, the small scraps of progress I make and then burn down the very next day. Every time I fix something, I ruin it twice over. Every time I crawl forward, I trip myself before I can stand. It’s pathetic. I am pathetic.

I’ve gotten in my own way again. Undone all the progress that took me years to even scrape together. Do you know how exhausting that is? To drag yourself across glass for years, bleeding, limping, just to finally see the faint outline of better days, and then rip it all apart yourself? I do. And I keep doing it. On purpose. Like some part of me can’t survive without breaking itself.

I need to be better.

I repeat it until the words mean nothing.

Better, better, better.

What does it even mean anymore?

I can’t continue like this. Not with this weight in my chest, this permanent knot in my stomach. Not with this voice in my head that whispers less than, less than, less than. And it’s right. It’s always right. I am less than. I don’t rise to meet anyone’s standards—not even my own. Especially not my own.

I tell myself I need to get it together. That’s the lie I use to wake up every morning. Get it together, clean up, sleep well, pretend you’re fine. Gather all the broken parts and tape them into some kind of human shape. And then what? Then destroy it. Always destroy it. Always undo it. Like that’s the only thing I’m truly good at.

Some people are builders. Some people are dreamers. I am demolition. I take whatever I touch, myself included, and reduce it to rubble. And I tell myself this is the truth. Because it is. Because if I start believing it isn’t, then I risk hope. And hope is just another way to set myself up for disappointment.

So I keep telling myself: I am less than.

I say it until it feels like fact.

I say it until it sounds holy.

I depress myself on purpose. Because I need it.

Because I don’t know how to be anything else. It’s ritual at this point. A sickness I feed like a pet, scratching behind its ears so it won’t leave me. I wouldn’t know who I was without it. I don’t even know if there is a me without it.

When I look at myself, all I see is proof of failure. Old skin that never healed right, traces of hands that never belonged there, mistakes carved into me like permanent marker. I carry every version of myself that ever failed, stacked one on top of the other, and I can feel the weight of them crushing me. I want to tear it all off. Peel it down to bone and start over. But I can’t. I’ve tried. Every time I destroy, I just rebuild the same broken shape again. I can’t stop coming back to it. I can’t stop coming back to me.

And isn’t that the cruelest part? I want better, but better doesn’t want me. Every time I stretch toward it, it slips further away. Like it knows I’ll chase until my body gives out, because I don’t have anything else to chase.

So I sit with the ache. With the self inflicted sickness. With the voices that reminds me I was never enough, and never will be. I cling to it, because at least it’s honest. At least it doesn’t leave. I depress myself on purpose, and maybe I always will. Because it feels like the only thing that belongs to me. The only thing I can trust not to be taken away.

And if that’s all I am, if that’s all I’ll ever be, then that’s okay.