It’s been three years since the last time I said that I use the passed baton to beat myself up.
Instead of running and passing it to other people, I broke down and punish myself for my failure. My tears, sweats, and bloods mixed together into one ugly entity. Clinging and latching itself to my skin, pronouncing my otherness I have been meaning to hide and quash from public’s judgement.
At that moment, the world was slowly crumbling and disintegrating into nothingness. Adrenaline were being pumped into my entire being, both energizing and eating me up from the inside. Heart beating fast, lungs contracting hard, and head whirling like mad.
I thought other people could feel it. I screamed and ran for help. I told them the world is being doomed; that time is ticking up. But people gave me puzzled look, disbelief 'huh?’, or outright smirk and laugh. Others' world was fine. It was just me and mine alone that went head first into self-destruction.
It was like a punch straight to the gut. Betrayal, hurt, and shame blossomed inside me. Thousands of thoughts and questions raced inside my head, spinning and whirling like a swirl of drained out tub.
Why me?
Why only me?
What did I do wrong?
How could this happen to me?
So I retraced my steps. From the first memory I could retrieve from the vault of mind to the last step I took before I wrote that down. There were — are- so many supporting and conflicting factors, but I know for a fact that finding that one factor will be harder than finding that needle in the hay.
One thing for sure, the baton didn’t come out of thin air. As figurative as it is, the cause is as material as the oxygen we breathe and the water we drink. Material sufferings born from the womb of material actions and thoughts. The material reality of hundred thousands of other entities, dating back to when two atoms decided that it’s better for them to multiply and created the most complex system ever: life and consciousness.
It’s been three years. I look back, think hard, and reflect them. The past, the me of three years ago. The me of years before. The pain, the anguish, the confusion, and occasional joy plus laugh. The first crack. The ever growing gap(s) inside. The shattered expectations that turned into frequent meltdowns.
It’s been three years and nothing has changed. My exterior exudes aura of an adult who can do anything she sets her mind to, but my interior is a messy affair: a polyamory of self-hatred, low self-esteem, conflicting thoughts, and endless cocktail of depression and anxiety.
Basically a tango that no one wants to dance to.
I still held into the baton. I still aspire, despite my dreams being shattered right in front of my eyes. I still work, despite the faults and mistakes of my past. I am still alive, despite how laborious the simple act of breathing can be sometimes.
But that doesn’t mean that I will run and pass it, then entering into another (and hopefully better) phase of life. I am still running in the same seven hell.
My mind is screaming different and contrasting things at the same time: to let it go and let it pass or keep pushing and searching for the exit gate. Both are loud and trying to drown each other. I don’t know which one to listen to.
As of now, I am holding the baton. I grip it tight but I also want to let it go. There’s no in-between.
But life is never black and white. There must be a compromise to be made.
So I bring up the baton and punish myself with it.
In those three years of trying to exit my own self made hells, yet I never learn any damn thing.
Now is a punishment o’clock. Always a punishment o’clock, until I can find the key to freedom.
