• Excessive, merciless self-disgust and abuse. Pain encases my mutilated arm. SAVE ME. My dulling knife strikes, and still draws blood. Where is the end to this? Will I ever escape? Set me free! Please! I want out of this jail of a cage. I need to spread my injured wings in hope to heal them. I want to breathe fresh air, and cleanse myself. Will I ever be free? Will anyone ever save me!? I kneel frozen in eternal emptiness. I lay burning, in my own, personal hell. I’m forced to be sealed from any serene happiness. Does anybody see this? Can anybody save me?
    Am I living, or am I a puppet? Who is in control of my strings? Release them; let me walk on my own. I want to feel again, no more scripted destinies. I want to choose my own path, no more following the leader. I will be free.
    Constricted in a tiny box of blackness, I yearn for the light. But I fear the open space. What has this solitude done to me? Who have these strings created? It is no longer I they control, for I am lost, a desolate and empty being. Will I ever be free? Can anybody see, or hear me? Do they even care?
    With my knife I cut and bleed, in hope of destroying those resisting, invisible ties. One day, I will force them to snap. Let them whip around and slice me! Let me feel pain once more. Let my smiles be real, and let my tears evaporate. I want to be free!
    I want to tear away this mask my master has made. I want to claw away thus false flesh that is my shell. I need the light to guide me to the surface of this suffocating sea of pain and despair. Restrained by these ropes of hate, weaved from others' cruel words and gimmicks. I only wanted to help them, befriend them! But they shunned me, and took away the medicine of love used to nurse my wounds.
    The lies everyone now tells me. They don’t love me. There is nothing to love. I am lost. I am dead to the world. Can anyone see the corpse left on the wayside? See my deserted body, with the bleeding heart? My mind paralyzed by every vain attempt to cure itself, overloaded by insecurities that have disabled me.
    What is left to do? Can I even stand without these threads to support me? Where can I go, if I escape? I have no safe haven. I am truly dead to the world. But what does it matter? My wounds will never mend, why do I still try to nurse them so? I’ve become useless and helpless. I’m nothing more than a burden and pain.
    Do you hear me now? Can you see this shadowy figure standing in front of you? Am I free at last? I try to take a step forward, and relentless exhaustion fills me. I pull open the gate that holds me in, with such a feeble effort. I open the door to the world above me.
    I gasp, in desperate hope of fresh air, but this air does not cleanse. It is ridden with poison and pollutants. It is murky, heavy gas that fills my lungs like lead and weakens me further. I have lost every hope, every spark ever kindled. Nobody is there to catch me as I fall, face down in the dirt. Fire burns around me, engulfing what is left of me. The crackling blaze drowns out my cries, my final words, “This does not hurt.”