Thoughts of Aging

Many people hate me. I realized this with a starting horror today as I sifted through my old photos. Nearly- no, every single person is either a glancing face or someone who detests me now.

Faces I have smiled beside. People I have spent more than half my life with.

It must be fair- it has to be. Bad things don't come in spades- they come in fucking decks. This is not coincidence. I am not absolved of guilt. I was horrible. I was evil, even.

I did not care for anyone but myself. I drained people until they were husks simply because I couldn't create my own joy, my own purpose, my own love.

So I stole all of theirs, and that of their families until I felt full, though I was a beast with a bottomless pit for a stomach so it took years for them to feel truly and completely bereft of life due to how methodical I was. Pepper them with love until they felt assuaged, then take and take and...

I am 22 in four days. And I am hated with the ferocity of what I amassed as a teenager. I am now facing the brunt of it all, as I see those same friends interact with each other and celebrate their accomplishments. As they leave me now behind. I stand still, surrounded by crumbling towers and displaced bricks in the form of the pressure I strapped to the shoulders of guileless children who were responsible for my life, weighed down until now.

I deserve to be hated. I was sick, though it is no excuse. My mind waged war on itself and I selfishly fought to survive. But I cannot fix what I have done. I carry the same scars of my old friends, though they think it was my careless wrist that sunk the blade and not one missed as I tried to gut myself. My other self. The evil that lurked since I was still chubby-fisted and wobbly in my movements.

Why do I suffer for pain I caused, because of the pain I received when I was too young to spell my own name?