Okay, so this is possibly my weirdest personal ritual and I confess that I don’t feel particularly comfortable sharing it because it’s kinda fucked up. While it’s something I’ve done almost my entire adult life, it isn’t a physical thing. It takes place entirely in my head and I do it whenever sadness, frustration, resentment, fear and rage combine to overwhelm me to the point of sobbing exhaustion. Basically, I systematically destroy myself, and when I’m finished I feel oddly at peace.
Be aware that I talk about pretty much everything that ever required a content warning, so if there’s any subject that triggers you, proceed with caution.
When things get too much for me and the part of me that the world sees shuts down, the part that only I know awakens. It’s the part of me that offers up cinematic responses to overwhelming situations, almost like mental self-defence. I see myself getting up and walking away from people – mid-sentence – when I don’t want to hear whatever it is they have to say. I see myself screaming, throwing things. And yes, sometimes I even see myself smacking certain people right in the mouth. My mind shows me reacting to things in ways that would provide the most satisfaction in the moment, but I’m always left feeling worse once that moment is gone because this is the point where guilt and shame at my own violent impulses set in.
When things are really bad, though, my thoughts go into overdrive and I allow them to take over. Around me people say, she’s been staring into space for hours, she totally checked out and isn’t listening to anyone, she’s making me worry now. If they knew what was going on in my head they’d soon discover what it is to worry about me.
I won’t call what happens fantasising. I won’t call it a daydream. Though to be honest I don’t really know what other name I could give it. I mean, what do you call it when you sit silently and allow your own violent ruin to take place behind your eyelids? Mental self-harm? I guess it does offer a similar release. And what do you call the type of person who, in some dark corner of their psyche, longs for their own total collapse to be real? That I don’t know.
But what do I see? Let me tell you…
I see myself in a rundown room. Sometimes it’s a room in a motel, sometimes it’s an abandoned, crumbling building. I’m dirty, muddy, and cold, and usually hunched in a shredded armchair, limp and listless.
Debris litters the mucky floor around the chair. Empty liquor bottles, beer bottles, used syringes. I never quite know if they’ve always been there of if I put them there before I became catatonic. If I’m the one who drank the bottle’s contents, if it’s my blood that taints the tips of the needles. All I know is that they’re there and I don’t care.
People come and go in the room. At first, they ignore me. I’m fine with that. Being ignored is so much easier than ignoring because actively pretending not to hear people takes effort. Too much effort. I’m not here to expand any effort whatsoever. They mill around, talk to one another, make so much noise my temples start to throb. Outwardly, there is no sign of this. I remain listless in the armchair, still just staring at nothing.
After a while, the people who invade that room of nothingness start to notice me there in my chair. They look uncomfortable and I can tell they’re wondering, is she alive? Is she dead? Do we care? No, no we don’t. They can see I’m a mess, so they give me a wide berth, not wanting to catch whatever malady it is that’s reduced me to such a pathetic state.
The next stage for them is irritation. Why is she still here? She needs a bath, she needs a doctor, she needs a shrink. Look at her, filthy, slovenly creature. The sight of me not responding to their well-intended insults quickly turns their annoyance to anger. Bottles are thrown, some of them breaking on the walls, on the floor. Some of them hit me. More of them hit me, people yell and scream because I just sit there and absorb the impact.
When their fists start flying I absorb that too. My lack of reaction infuriates them. Their inch-close yells propel saliva from their lips to my face. Raised blood pressure reddens their cheeks, crimson cracks appear in the whites of their eyes. I can see their fury, but I can’t feel it. It doesn’t touch me. When I’m here, it can’t.
But they continue to touch me all the same. The angrier they get, the more physical they get. One of them finally snaps. He drags my legs forward, making me slouch further into the chair. I don’t respond when he pulls my jeans off. Don’t even blink when he lowers his fly, takes his hand across my face then shoves his solid cock into my bone-dry cunt in two, three, four grating thrusts. I just slump there while my body is abused.
He comes quickly, inside of me, then hits me again. Calls me a mangy little whore, tells me I should be grateful that he deemed to fuck such a fat bitch in the first place. Most of the people hanging around look uncomfortable, some of them even start muttering the word rape. But there’s a very clear question mark in the lilt of their voices. Was it rape, though? Really? She knew what he was going to do but didn’t even try to stop him, so can you really call it that?
Another man takes this now universal uncertainty as a sign that I did, in actual fact, consent to being fucked. So, he comes over for his turn, lifting my jumper to my neck so he can grab my tits as he jabs me with his pointy dick. He can’t stop rambling, trying to get me to communicate with him because he’s special and I should want to. At first, he’s sorry. He tells me that he knows he shouldn’t be shagging me when I didn’t say he could. Then he asks if I like it. If I like his dick, if it feels good, if it has a chance of making me come. When I don’t answer he gets whiny, telling me he wants me to enjoy it, he wants to know he can make me enjoy him. Demands come next, and angry blows swiftly follow. He comes, wipes his cock on torn denim, walks away in disgust. I don’t even wonder which of us he’s disgusted with, it doesn’t matter to me.
Man after man take his place. All of them come inside of me, none of them use condoms. And as each link in the chain passes they start looking weaker, sicker, diseased. They move me around as though I’m a doll, taking turns to fuck me, doubling up to fuck me. They pump my cunt, my mouth, my arse full of their contaminated come, they spray it over my tits, rub it into the cuts they’ve made in my bruised flesh. My body is broken, my mind is broken, their humanity is broken.
And all the while I feel nothing. I’m probably getting sick. Contracting whatever it is that’s making their skin peel, that’s making their eyes rheumy, that’s turned their spit greyish-pink. They’re using me, destroying me, killing me.
No.
That’s not right.
I’m using them.
I’m destroying me.
I’m killing me.
Because I’m the one facilitating all of this, aren’t I?
Do I want this to happen? Is that it? When I come out of this twisted trance I’ve lulled myself into I know that the answer will unequivocally be no. When I’m in my right mind, of course, I don’t want this horrific ordeal to be real. But right now, when I’m at my lowest, when my heart and head are at their sickest, I’ll wallow in it, because I know what this is. I’m allowing everything that I am to completely and utterly break down. I’m in the throes of imaginary self-destruction in a world where everything I am, everything I hate about myself is undone. And, God help me, but the scary thing is…I kinda like it here.
