Aphrodite 9.3 - Living is a Problem Because Everything Dies
Apr 26, 2021 22:22:26 GMT -5
Sora Weaver likes this
Post by Aphrodite IX on Apr 26, 2021 22:22:26 GMT -5
TW: Suicidal ideation, suicide, self harm, addiction
Everything you love dies.
Have you ever felt despair?
I’m not talking about loss or fear or sadness. That’s boring shit. I hate people who walk out and act like they had a bad day so they truly know loss. Not that one bad day can’t have it’s time. There’s always the day so bad that it breaks you as a person. The day where everything falls apart and leaves you sitting there wondering just how you ever thought you’d make it through. We build everything with so much care, trying to tell ourselves that it’ll all be okay in the end.
The people we love will be okay.
The life we’ve built will be okay.
The time we’ve spent will matter.
It’s a cute little lie. We need a little sense of safety or else we’d just…what? Lie around, crawling and roiling in our own despair until it eats us apart? Picked away at like carrion for each and every vulture crawling and digging to tell the world that we’re not dead yet. Please stop biting and rending and tearing because deep in the heart of this broken body there’s still a heart that beats and clings desperately to life. Even if the soul has long since been vacated, the vessel still stirs. Don’t tear at us. Don’t abandon us. We’re alive. We’re still alive. Oh god help us we are still alive.
Everything will be okay.
Except it won’t.
Everything we do is meaningless.
Everything we built will fall.
Everything we love dies.
Yet here you are, celebrating as though you’ve done something. You think that gold around your shoulder means that you’ve saved yourself? That you’ll be a better person now because you’ve finally found…what? Success? It’ll build you a legacy which will last long after you’ve died and mean that on some level, you’ll live on forever. A life immortal so long as it is remembered. A beautiful lie you tell yourself to justify all the losses you had along the way.
You are empty inside.
What choices did you make to get here, Chelsea? What things did you love which you had to abandon? How many times did you find solace in your suffering because it was all for the moment when you got that big win? That big title? That chance to prove yourself as the best of the best, undaunted and undeterred?
Did you give up friends?
Did you give up family?
Did you give your life?
Everything you build will turn to ash in your hands.
The Dead Girl and the Ghost walked the tracks every weekend.
Sometimes they’d cut class to go during the week as well, but they tried to keep it to a minimum so that their parents wouldn’t get on their case. They understood why their parents worried. They understood why they didn’t understand. On and on their parents would talk about how they needed to think about their futures, all while the Dead Girl and the Ghost would nod and make gestures to look remorseful. It was a lie of course. How could they feel remorse? They knew that while their parents were coming from a place of love, it amounted to nothing.
They would never live long enough to have a future.
So really, what was the point of class? The boredom and idle speculation. Who was dating who. Who was fucking who. Who cheated on who with who. Who was doing drugs, as though they gave a single fuck about drugs they weren’t using themselves. There was a whole world in a school. An ecosystem full of living people trying desperately to find the drive to live within themselves. They existed within it; parasites living only for the brief moments where they could truly feel alive. The Dead Girl and the Ghost would do anything to feel alive. Even for just a moment.
They walked the tracks, waiting for the telltale rumble to tell them a train was coming. They’d always hesitate a little before hopping off. Always laugh and commiserate about how they thought about just standing there and letting themselves become nothing more that blood and bone and empty meat splattered across the tracks. They’d laugh a little laugh together about that. Of course they couldn’t really die. Not as long as they had each other.
The future was forever away.
The future would never happen.
The Dead Girl and the Ghost lived for the present because the present was what they had. Between them, they shared moments. Two people half alive shared half a life to make a semblance of a real life between them. They’d walk the tracks on weekends, then go back to the Dead Girl’s house and play video games after smoking a joint they bought from Cameron behind the McDonald’s. Sometimes Cameron would bring them pills or powders and they’d use those just as readily. When you’re dead inside, anything will do to feel alive.
They would be together forever.
Forever and never.
When there’s no future, it amounts to the same.
You will die scared and alone.
I know what you’re going to say.
You’re going to talk about how hard you fought to get here. All the challenges you’ve overcome. All the people who thought you’d never make it. How that little lump of gold on your shoulder proves them wrong. You’re a consummate professional wrestling champion, Chelsea. You fit the mold so perfectly, it feels like it was made just for you. You’re an action figure. A Barbie doll given life and a tragic backstory to cross sell to the action figure market. A carbon copy of every single tough girl who’s had some struggles but overcome.
I’m sure the Lifetime movie of your story would be a real tear jerker. A lost girl, alone and adrift after her partner said goodbye. Someone who spiralled and lost hope and collapsed into herself, only to get back up again. People would criticize the trite plot and the mediocre acting, but in their hearts they would be inspired by your ability to persevere in the face of adversity.
They won’t see the lie of it.
You’re not a person to them, after all. They won’t see the shaking hands every time your nerves get to you. They won’t see the bottle of pills you keep somewhere in your house in case the weight of things gets to be too much. They won’t see what happens when your run of success derails into failure and you’re left with nothing but yourself and the ghost of your failures to turn to. When everything you’ve worked so hard for falls apart in your hands, what will you have left?
Despair.
Give up.
You’ll have despair.
Submit.
That will be my gift to you.
When you see me carrying around that title, which I promise you means absolutely nothing to me, how long before your heart breaks? To know that you lost the thing you fought so hard…spent YEARS fighting to get? And in the end, you didn’t lose it to someone who would cherish it. You didn’t lose to someone who would honour the belt or be an honourable champion. You’ll have to live with the knowledge that it’s a fancy coaster to me. A doorstop that will bring more and more dangerous people to my doorstep.
To you, that title is the summation of your hopes and dreams.
To me, it’s the ultimate weapon I can use against myself.
Everything you care about will turn to dust.
Submit.
The Dead Girl had been quiet.
She was always thoughtful. Certainly not the type who felt the need to fill silence. That was always more the Ghost’s role. She had so many thoughts, a thousand a minute sometimes it felt like. The noise was always so much. Too loud. Too intense. Too much. All she wanted was for it to stop. Just for a minute. Just for a day. The scraping of thoughts in her head like weevils, burrowing and scraping around until she feels like she’ll break. So she filled the silences in the hopes that putting them out in the world would make them quiet in her head. It was never how it worked, but the hope always remained.
Still, the Dead Girl had been quiet.
The Ghost wondered how long they would walk the tracks today. The sun was high in the sky and she could feel the thirst dragging at her. The water she packed was a blessing. She didn’t have room in her bag for as much as she wanted, but it kept her from feeling parched. The Dead Girl didn’t drink, wiping sweat from her forehead and looking distant.
‘What are you thinking about?’ the Ghost asked. The Dead Girl laid down on the train tracks and looked up at the sky. Giving a look for a train and seeing nothing, the Ghost laid down next to her. ‘Is everything good?’ she asked. It was the same question told in another way and they both knew it. The Dead Girl didn’t nod. The Dead Girl didn’t shake her head. The Dead Girl simply stared at the sky as she spoke.
‘I’m going to die here. I hate this place so fucking much. We just…we keep doing the same bullshit. Getting fucked up. Doing stupid shit. Making dumb mistakes that other people have to clean up. And I look and I just…our fucking parents did this same shit, man. Look back at their yearbooks and you’ll see these years when they ran wild, only to just…I don’t know. Die out. The spark in them just faded and they never left this place. They grew up here, spent their lives here, and they’ll die here. And it’ll happen to us too. We’ll get a little older, forget these moments when we were free. Settle down. Stop being wild, start being…that. Have some kids. Be…I dunno. Fucking normal. We’ll just keep on living this stupid, shitty half life and one day we’ll die here. We’ll be fucking buried here. Christ.’
The Ghost thought about this for a moment. She opened her mouth to reply when she felt the rumble through the tracks. ‘Oh shit.’ she said, getting up and standing out of the way. The Dead Girl didn’t move. ‘The train’s coming. Get up.’ the Ghost said. The Dead Girl didn’t move. ‘FOR FUCK’S SAKE, THE TRAIN IS COMING!’ the Ghost yelled. The Dead Girl didn’t move. ‘XXXXXXX’ the Ghost screamed her name and for a moment, something awakened in the Dead Girl. She came alive long enough to roll off the tracks a few scarce seconds before the train came booming by. She had to defend herself from the Ghost’s repeated punches to her arm, a release of anger and fear.
The Dead Girl laughed.
That night, they were in the Dead Girl’s garage. Her family were staying with her aunt out of town for the week, so they had the run of the place. It wasn’t a shock that the garage was thick with smoke and the two found themselves laughing as though they didn’t have any worries. How could you have any worries when you’re only half alive, after all? They talked about all the people they hated, conveniently talking around how much they hated themselves. The Ghost felt the tension of the day wash away from her like summer rain.
Then the Dead Girl pulled out the gun.
‘I found it in the basement. My dad keeps it in a safe, but he uses the same password for everything. You want to hold it?’ the Ghost shook her head. There was a weight before her hand even came into contact with it. She had a feeling that if she held it, she wouldn’t be able to…
‘How about we play a game?’ the Dead Girl asked. She popped out the cylinder, letting the bullets fall into her hand. The Ghost felt a sense of unreality fall upon her. She was not her. She was living another life. She was another person. This was all too impossible to be real. ‘Russian Roulette is a classic. We can each take one shot and see just how lucky we are.’ The Dead Girl kept talking as though this wasn’t crazy. ‘One in six chance. How about it?’
The Ghost nodded.
She did not know why she nodded.
‘Do you want to go first or second?’ the Dead Girl asked. The Ghost answered. She took the gun in her hand. It weighed more than she had expected. It had the weight of a life. She felt her hand shake as she lifted it to her temple.
She pulled the trigger.
…
…
Nothing happened. An empty click. She waited and waited for everything to end, but against all odds it continued. She still felt herself reeling as she felt the gun leave her hand, snatched up by the Dead Girl who looked at her with a smile that was perfectly balanced between frantic and sad. ‘Bad luck for you.’ the Dead Girl said. She put the gun up to her temple. The Ghost felt like a statue. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t scream.
‘Fuck this town’ the Dead Girl said.
Then she was spread across the garage.
Then she said nothing ever again.
I’m sorry Lacey.
I don’t believe in anything.
I don’t say that as a matter or pride or as any kind of superiority thing. I wish I could believe in things like you do. I wish I could just think that when I win this title, it would fix all my problems. My mistakes would become justified by my accomplishments and I’d be a better person. I’d become someone who deserves to stand here in front of you, rather than what I am…a ghost of a girl who saw true despair and knew that she would never feel anything else ever again.
You think that being the best will fix anything for you.
You think that it matters.
You want the end to justify your journey and it won’t.
It should have been me.
The game was rigged all along.
If this were a wrestling match, maybe you’d have that chance. Maybe technique or knowledge or skill could save you. But here…here I’m going to make you suffer and bleed. I’m going to force you to forget every fancy thing you know and become a fucking animal to survive because the only way you get out of this is if you cut me up a whole hell of a lot worse. Barbed wire and blades and fire and explosives…I’ve seen so much worse than anything you can do to me.
Just the idea of what’s going to happen when we get in that ring…
It’s everything I could hope for.
You need to be your absolute best self to have a chance here. Out of your element against someone who you don’t really understand. If you could have been that best self, you never would have had that fall. If you were the best version of you, there would be no comeback story. You’ll give me every bit of punishment I need…but in the end you are going to be pinned down in that ring, a bloody heap. You’ll watch me degrade your title. You’ll watch me crush your dreams in front of you.
You will fall to despair.
You think the work you’ve done matters.
It doesn’t.
You think the fights you’ve won matter.
They don’t.
You think your passion will carry you.
It won’t.
The only thing in life that’s inevitable is the end.
Give in.
I am the End, Chelsea.
End it.
Submit.
Everything you love dies.
Have you ever felt despair?
I’m not talking about loss or fear or sadness. That’s boring shit. I hate people who walk out and act like they had a bad day so they truly know loss. Not that one bad day can’t have it’s time. There’s always the day so bad that it breaks you as a person. The day where everything falls apart and leaves you sitting there wondering just how you ever thought you’d make it through. We build everything with so much care, trying to tell ourselves that it’ll all be okay in the end.
The people we love will be okay.
The life we’ve built will be okay.
The time we’ve spent will matter.
It’s a cute little lie. We need a little sense of safety or else we’d just…what? Lie around, crawling and roiling in our own despair until it eats us apart? Picked away at like carrion for each and every vulture crawling and digging to tell the world that we’re not dead yet. Please stop biting and rending and tearing because deep in the heart of this broken body there’s still a heart that beats and clings desperately to life. Even if the soul has long since been vacated, the vessel still stirs. Don’t tear at us. Don’t abandon us. We’re alive. We’re still alive. Oh god help us we are still alive.
Everything will be okay.
Except it won’t.
Everything we do is meaningless.
Everything we built will fall.
Everything we love dies.
Yet here you are, celebrating as though you’ve done something. You think that gold around your shoulder means that you’ve saved yourself? That you’ll be a better person now because you’ve finally found…what? Success? It’ll build you a legacy which will last long after you’ve died and mean that on some level, you’ll live on forever. A life immortal so long as it is remembered. A beautiful lie you tell yourself to justify all the losses you had along the way.
You are empty inside.
What choices did you make to get here, Chelsea? What things did you love which you had to abandon? How many times did you find solace in your suffering because it was all for the moment when you got that big win? That big title? That chance to prove yourself as the best of the best, undaunted and undeterred?
Did you give up friends?
Did you give up family?
Did you give your life?
Everything you build will turn to ash in your hands.
The Dead Girl and the Ghost walked the tracks every weekend.
Sometimes they’d cut class to go during the week as well, but they tried to keep it to a minimum so that their parents wouldn’t get on their case. They understood why their parents worried. They understood why they didn’t understand. On and on their parents would talk about how they needed to think about their futures, all while the Dead Girl and the Ghost would nod and make gestures to look remorseful. It was a lie of course. How could they feel remorse? They knew that while their parents were coming from a place of love, it amounted to nothing.
They would never live long enough to have a future.
So really, what was the point of class? The boredom and idle speculation. Who was dating who. Who was fucking who. Who cheated on who with who. Who was doing drugs, as though they gave a single fuck about drugs they weren’t using themselves. There was a whole world in a school. An ecosystem full of living people trying desperately to find the drive to live within themselves. They existed within it; parasites living only for the brief moments where they could truly feel alive. The Dead Girl and the Ghost would do anything to feel alive. Even for just a moment.
They walked the tracks, waiting for the telltale rumble to tell them a train was coming. They’d always hesitate a little before hopping off. Always laugh and commiserate about how they thought about just standing there and letting themselves become nothing more that blood and bone and empty meat splattered across the tracks. They’d laugh a little laugh together about that. Of course they couldn’t really die. Not as long as they had each other.
The future was forever away.
The future would never happen.
The Dead Girl and the Ghost lived for the present because the present was what they had. Between them, they shared moments. Two people half alive shared half a life to make a semblance of a real life between them. They’d walk the tracks on weekends, then go back to the Dead Girl’s house and play video games after smoking a joint they bought from Cameron behind the McDonald’s. Sometimes Cameron would bring them pills or powders and they’d use those just as readily. When you’re dead inside, anything will do to feel alive.
They would be together forever.
Forever and never.
When there’s no future, it amounts to the same.
You will die scared and alone.
I know what you’re going to say.
You’re going to talk about how hard you fought to get here. All the challenges you’ve overcome. All the people who thought you’d never make it. How that little lump of gold on your shoulder proves them wrong. You’re a consummate professional wrestling champion, Chelsea. You fit the mold so perfectly, it feels like it was made just for you. You’re an action figure. A Barbie doll given life and a tragic backstory to cross sell to the action figure market. A carbon copy of every single tough girl who’s had some struggles but overcome.
I’m sure the Lifetime movie of your story would be a real tear jerker. A lost girl, alone and adrift after her partner said goodbye. Someone who spiralled and lost hope and collapsed into herself, only to get back up again. People would criticize the trite plot and the mediocre acting, but in their hearts they would be inspired by your ability to persevere in the face of adversity.
They won’t see the lie of it.
You’re not a person to them, after all. They won’t see the shaking hands every time your nerves get to you. They won’t see the bottle of pills you keep somewhere in your house in case the weight of things gets to be too much. They won’t see what happens when your run of success derails into failure and you’re left with nothing but yourself and the ghost of your failures to turn to. When everything you’ve worked so hard for falls apart in your hands, what will you have left?
Despair.
Give up.
You’ll have despair.
Submit.
That will be my gift to you.
When you see me carrying around that title, which I promise you means absolutely nothing to me, how long before your heart breaks? To know that you lost the thing you fought so hard…spent YEARS fighting to get? And in the end, you didn’t lose it to someone who would cherish it. You didn’t lose to someone who would honour the belt or be an honourable champion. You’ll have to live with the knowledge that it’s a fancy coaster to me. A doorstop that will bring more and more dangerous people to my doorstep.
To you, that title is the summation of your hopes and dreams.
To me, it’s the ultimate weapon I can use against myself.
Everything you care about will turn to dust.
Submit.
The Dead Girl had been quiet.
She was always thoughtful. Certainly not the type who felt the need to fill silence. That was always more the Ghost’s role. She had so many thoughts, a thousand a minute sometimes it felt like. The noise was always so much. Too loud. Too intense. Too much. All she wanted was for it to stop. Just for a minute. Just for a day. The scraping of thoughts in her head like weevils, burrowing and scraping around until she feels like she’ll break. So she filled the silences in the hopes that putting them out in the world would make them quiet in her head. It was never how it worked, but the hope always remained.
Still, the Dead Girl had been quiet.
The Ghost wondered how long they would walk the tracks today. The sun was high in the sky and she could feel the thirst dragging at her. The water she packed was a blessing. She didn’t have room in her bag for as much as she wanted, but it kept her from feeling parched. The Dead Girl didn’t drink, wiping sweat from her forehead and looking distant.
‘What are you thinking about?’ the Ghost asked. The Dead Girl laid down on the train tracks and looked up at the sky. Giving a look for a train and seeing nothing, the Ghost laid down next to her. ‘Is everything good?’ she asked. It was the same question told in another way and they both knew it. The Dead Girl didn’t nod. The Dead Girl didn’t shake her head. The Dead Girl simply stared at the sky as she spoke.
‘I’m going to die here. I hate this place so fucking much. We just…we keep doing the same bullshit. Getting fucked up. Doing stupid shit. Making dumb mistakes that other people have to clean up. And I look and I just…our fucking parents did this same shit, man. Look back at their yearbooks and you’ll see these years when they ran wild, only to just…I don’t know. Die out. The spark in them just faded and they never left this place. They grew up here, spent their lives here, and they’ll die here. And it’ll happen to us too. We’ll get a little older, forget these moments when we were free. Settle down. Stop being wild, start being…that. Have some kids. Be…I dunno. Fucking normal. We’ll just keep on living this stupid, shitty half life and one day we’ll die here. We’ll be fucking buried here. Christ.’
The Ghost thought about this for a moment. She opened her mouth to reply when she felt the rumble through the tracks. ‘Oh shit.’ she said, getting up and standing out of the way. The Dead Girl didn’t move. ‘The train’s coming. Get up.’ the Ghost said. The Dead Girl didn’t move. ‘FOR FUCK’S SAKE, THE TRAIN IS COMING!’ the Ghost yelled. The Dead Girl didn’t move. ‘XXXXXXX’ the Ghost screamed her name and for a moment, something awakened in the Dead Girl. She came alive long enough to roll off the tracks a few scarce seconds before the train came booming by. She had to defend herself from the Ghost’s repeated punches to her arm, a release of anger and fear.
The Dead Girl laughed.
That night, they were in the Dead Girl’s garage. Her family were staying with her aunt out of town for the week, so they had the run of the place. It wasn’t a shock that the garage was thick with smoke and the two found themselves laughing as though they didn’t have any worries. How could you have any worries when you’re only half alive, after all? They talked about all the people they hated, conveniently talking around how much they hated themselves. The Ghost felt the tension of the day wash away from her like summer rain.
Then the Dead Girl pulled out the gun.
‘I found it in the basement. My dad keeps it in a safe, but he uses the same password for everything. You want to hold it?’ the Ghost shook her head. There was a weight before her hand even came into contact with it. She had a feeling that if she held it, she wouldn’t be able to…
‘How about we play a game?’ the Dead Girl asked. She popped out the cylinder, letting the bullets fall into her hand. The Ghost felt a sense of unreality fall upon her. She was not her. She was living another life. She was another person. This was all too impossible to be real. ‘Russian Roulette is a classic. We can each take one shot and see just how lucky we are.’ The Dead Girl kept talking as though this wasn’t crazy. ‘One in six chance. How about it?’
The Ghost nodded.
She did not know why she nodded.
‘Do you want to go first or second?’ the Dead Girl asked. The Ghost answered. She took the gun in her hand. It weighed more than she had expected. It had the weight of a life. She felt her hand shake as she lifted it to her temple.
She pulled the trigger.
…
…
Nothing happened. An empty click. She waited and waited for everything to end, but against all odds it continued. She still felt herself reeling as she felt the gun leave her hand, snatched up by the Dead Girl who looked at her with a smile that was perfectly balanced between frantic and sad. ‘Bad luck for you.’ the Dead Girl said. She put the gun up to her temple. The Ghost felt like a statue. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t scream.
‘Fuck this town’ the Dead Girl said.
Then she was spread across the garage.
Then she said nothing ever again.
I’m sorry Lacey.
I don’t believe in anything.
I don’t say that as a matter or pride or as any kind of superiority thing. I wish I could believe in things like you do. I wish I could just think that when I win this title, it would fix all my problems. My mistakes would become justified by my accomplishments and I’d be a better person. I’d become someone who deserves to stand here in front of you, rather than what I am…a ghost of a girl who saw true despair and knew that she would never feel anything else ever again.
You think that being the best will fix anything for you.
You think that it matters.
You want the end to justify your journey and it won’t.
It should have been me.
The game was rigged all along.
If this were a wrestling match, maybe you’d have that chance. Maybe technique or knowledge or skill could save you. But here…here I’m going to make you suffer and bleed. I’m going to force you to forget every fancy thing you know and become a fucking animal to survive because the only way you get out of this is if you cut me up a whole hell of a lot worse. Barbed wire and blades and fire and explosives…I’ve seen so much worse than anything you can do to me.
Just the idea of what’s going to happen when we get in that ring…
It’s everything I could hope for.
You need to be your absolute best self to have a chance here. Out of your element against someone who you don’t really understand. If you could have been that best self, you never would have had that fall. If you were the best version of you, there would be no comeback story. You’ll give me every bit of punishment I need…but in the end you are going to be pinned down in that ring, a bloody heap. You’ll watch me degrade your title. You’ll watch me crush your dreams in front of you.
You will fall to despair.
You think the work you’ve done matters.
It doesn’t.
You think the fights you’ve won matter.
They don’t.
You think your passion will carry you.
It won’t.
The only thing in life that’s inevitable is the end.
Give in.
I am the End, Chelsea.
End it.
Submit.