Insatiable

On some days, I don’t get out of my bed. I sit and stare at the ceiling, sometimes outside a window if there is a window to look outside. Some days I feel the hot sticky air of the afternoon dampening my blanketed body, some days the room is shrouded in darkness with no sense of time. On these particular days, I have to dig within for a substantial reason to get up. Of course, I get up to go to the bathroom and eat food. But they too, seem so unnecessarily necessary. On these days, I want my hunger and other useless functions to subside. And ironically on these days I binge and touch myself all the more, feeling further disgusted by myself. Not because I feel that bingeing and touching is wrong, but because on these days they become a way to kill time, not to feel pleasure – just to kill time.

On days like these, I command my voluntary muscles to shut the fuck up. The involuntary ones keep doing their work. The heart keeps beating and the veins keep the blood running – unnecessarily necessary. My mind divides itself in two – the prisoner and the guard. The prisoner bangs its head against the skull, clawing for a way out. The guard is paralysed from the neck down. That’s okay, because all it really needs is its vile tongue. It has a sinister way with words – it thrives on the prisoner’s insecurities, sucks the marrow out of the hopeful and smacks its lips, forever hungry for more.

On days like these, the guard is very powerful. The prisoner manages to keep the guard at bay most days, but on some days the guard find its way. It speaks to it in low steady whispers about my failures, my heart-break and the ones I truly love. It conjures images, what-ifs and entire stories by the mere twist of a menacing smile. The prisoner screams and bangs my skull. I pop an aspirin. The prisoner screams, for it knows that’s not the cure. The guard conjures an image of a life barely lived, lovers lost and friends forever gone. It all looks so real, I think. One after another scenarios of my inevitable failure, a loveless loop, on repeat, on repeat. The guard waits patiently for it need not wait long, its dessert is near. The prisoner gives up, the spine goes cold, the heart hurts in melancholy, the reel ends, and the tear falls from the brimming lids.

The guard smiles. Its binge begins.