aletterfromthevoid

[aletterfromthevoid]

sometimes it feels like even if I were to write a life-ending note, no one would notice

[aletterfromthevoid]

Chapter IX | A Plague Tale: Innocence (2019) — Asobo Studio

[aletterfromthevoid]

[aletterfromthevoid]

there was a time, many years ago, where I felt significant, where I felt seen. now I wonder if anyone can see me in my self-imposed prison

[aletterfromthevoid]

It's just another day in your life wasted. Another day you could have done something productive, another day where you could have at least had the decency to try to care for your family.

You sat on the couch. You failed again.

My shame for you is never-ending, yet you continue to fall into failure. You never had a plan, did you? You were given such an incredible start, no student loan debt, no debt of any kind, a master's degree (you barely deserved, let's be honest), a history of world-travel making you seem so much more than you are (or were, to be fair), and here you sit. You sit here on the same couch you rest upon every day, at the end of the day you return here like a wild beast returning to its lair.

Beasts are greater than you, you know. They have drive and purpose, you can't even manage to put your pants on the right way on the first try. Beasts forage in the world and survive, you languish away in shame and obscurity, with this great weight of a promised purpose, some notoriety that doesn't exist, a name for yourself that disappears in the memories of everyone you knew and still know (though if they spare a thought, it would be shocking).

I am so ashamed of you, so ashamed that I sit here and have no choice but to know you as "self".

[aletterfromthevoid]

Study of a Head, Francis Bacon, 1952

[aletterfromthevoid]

i feel like such an eternal sack of shit for the fact that i never posted an obituary for my dad. then again, without a body to bury it's a bit hard to find the will to write one.

[aletterfromthevoid]

[aletterfromthevoid]

Last year, I died.

I woke up one morning to the news that my father died. I lost my breath. I made conspiracies, several of which I still believe. I wailed into the darkness of the forest behind me, becoming in my own way a banshee, though truthfully the only death my wail foretold was my own.

Through the writhing, the gashing of teeth, the bitter cries into the darkness....I died. Somewhere between planning his not-funeral, and breaking plastic lawn décor, I died. The wailing ceased into an uneasy silence, the gnashing settled into malnutrition, and the cries dried into salt on my cheeks that, a year later, still won't wash off.

I always expected that in death, in my moment as the one bereft, that there would be this magical unexpected swell of love like a warm wave on the happiest of childhood beaches -- I would be enveloped in rapture, overwhelmed and left breathless by the generosity and magnanimity of others. I was wrong.

Where I stood, a child on the shore, arms wide and prepared to break with the warm wave on the shore -- the wave never came. My glassy eyes stared down the ocean, which in the end turned out to have only been a mirage.

I am not ungrateful to the very few who chose to love me throughout my death. I am satisfied, relieved, at those who made an active choice to love me as I began to decay, as my once (somewhat) vibrant personality turned to rot, and as my (somewhat) regular responses soon became empty air, as I became part of the void in which is reside to this day.

I am bitter, more bitter than I ever wanted to be at what should have been my "best years". I resent those who preached their love for those in need and yet not once checked to see if I was even still breathing. I resent those who claimed true friendship as they became ghosts in my periphery. I hope one day, if I ever cease to fester, that I can forgive them.

For now, though, I am dead. I died in June. It is June again and I am still dead, despite the pills and the wasted hours of therapy.

I want this to be considered my withered digits wriggling through the trodden earth, trying to climb out of my unmarked grave, in the hopes that I might live again. I won't ever live like I did before I died -- that is absolutely impossible. There is no way for that person to come back. The girl I was before is gone and will never return, she can't, she is dead with her father. The corpse I am now, however, she is restless and stirring from the uneasy nihility where she had been hastily entombed. A bloated corpse desperate to find a way to go on since the soul refuses to depart from the prison of bones, adipose, blood, and flesh.

[aletterfromthevoid]

Fredik Backman, A Man Called Ove

[aletterfromthevoid]

Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.

Jean-Paul Sartre

[aletterfromthevoid]

None come further than faith.

Soren Kierkegaard

[aletterfromthevoid]

This is so pleasant

[aletterfromthevoid]

Carlo Maratta, Scene “The Adoration of the Magi”’ Framed with a Garland of Flowers, c.1650

[aletterfromthevoid]

[aletterfromthevoid]

Stuart Laing

[aletterfromthevoid]

Study Of Nursing Madonna And Profile Heads 1480

Leonardo da Vinci