it’s winter again

there are claw marks on the inside of my skull. i’ve been scratching for four years, and no one has ever heard. tap, tap, tap. maybe i’ve been scratching forever. maybe i will always be scratching, always clawing my way out of something i simply cannot escape. i cannot escape who i am. i don’t know who that is.

i’ve been thinking a lot recently. i haven’t wanted to but it seems i just can’t stop. there’s one word i keep coming back to, no matter which direction i spiral. meaningless. what does it mean to have meaning? i keep thinking my life doesn’t. i think i’ve always felt that, too. always scratching and always thinking. always fearing. i fear the things i don’t know. i fear the things i do know. as a child i knew the wind wasn’t dangerous, yet i feared it all the same. storms remind me of basements now. i’ve been wondering why my parents never wondered. am i the only one to wonder so much?

i keep thinking about wanting a hug. i get hugs. i give hugs, more than i used to. i get a lot more than i used to, yet i still find myself wanting more. is it greedy, that i have everything i once wanted, yet i’m still longing for more? 

i’ve been talking to people, too. counselors and nurses. more soon, if things go as planned. i’m scared of that, too. scared they won’t help me. scared they will. i’ve always wanted something to be wrong with me, but if they tell me there is, that means it’s real. i’ll have an explanation, but at what cost? the knowledge it’ll stay with me for the rest of my life? the knowledge that i’m broken, different, something that cannot function on it’s own. something made to be fixed, or succumb to it’s own design? i long to be fixed, to go back to what i once was. the more i think about it, i think i never was the way i want to be.

always scratching and always thinking. maybe that’s all i’m made to do.