The Whip

by RS
(Sydney, Australia)

The beat of my life is the crack of a whip. Life beats me as I try to beat it. I beat the life out of life ‘til I’m both beaten and beat.

They say: Get over yourself. Pick yourself up. Don’t be weak. Trust me, retail therapy and chocolate will work a treat. Now trust me when I say I’ve tried. But eating, sleeping, talking, breathing, waking, walking are laboured when living is not favoured.

They say: Tomorrow is a new day. But to me, it’s the evil demon that forces me to reason. To live through an interrogation. Tortured, until I justify my existence whose continuity is not set in stone. The sun may rise and set. And my time may not be yet. But it’s still at my behest.

This is the final stand of my revolt against life and its strife. Call me a coward if you will. But it’s still an act of will to be finally still. I didn’t choose to live. But I can choose how I die: pick how, where and when the curtain descends. To those who say, “Life is how you choose to live it”: I choose my death while I live. And that’s all there is to it.

They protest loudly at my protest against the cardinal human rule: self-preservation. But rules are but a construction, a human-made fiction. They have no authority over self-destruction. To that haven I always return. All paths lead there. Momentary ceasefire in a bloody warzone.

My life is written in blood. Literally. New cuts ooze red, reopening scars whose memories haunt me like a second self lurking in my reflection. They call it depression. Sometimes it merges into me, eclipsing my identity, ‘til I’m emasculated. At other times, a figment of a distant past. Unrecognisable. A stranger with no name, whose wretchedness defies description.

Words, once teeming with meaning, logic and reasoning, evaporate. I utter, but only stutter. A fool.

The beat of my life is the crack of a whip. Life beats me as I try to beat it. I beat the life out of life ‘til I’m both beaten and beat.