HOW TO FUCK UP ROYALLY; A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO (SELF) DESTROYING:
1. Today you will skip all but the least important of your classes. What you’re doing during that time doesn’t matter, but if you wish to really stick to the program, make sure it’s nothing important. don’t bother picking up a book or putting a pen to paper, you can’t feel the beat of words as drumline anymore, but instead are a distant planet, a lonely star. it’s okay. you wouldn’t have been able to focus anyway. you are a confetti cannon that will never fire, a race that threatens to complete but instead always seems to be rained out. you could be so good if you could only get out of bed
2. this bed. this bed is anchor, this bed is now a museum you dedicate to depravity, to disease. get used to staring at walls and eating meals with extra crumbs just so you have some excuse for this skin itching at you. the size of your coffin will be slightly smaller than these sheets, better get used to a restful eternity anyway. below your feet will be a small throneroom full of dirty clothes and takeout boxes, you will make your nest of mess and love it for the smell, for the fact it represents how you feel inside. the devil is playing fiddle somewhere outside your window, let him in. he can share in it.
3. drop the phone like a thorned lifeline, leave it out there in the water and instead let your lungs swell heavy with your own selfhate, remember they didn’t really want to hear from you anyway. let the voicemails rest on a backburner, maybe if you’re lucky they will crisp away into nothing and you won’t have to deal with them anymore. lash out with no direction, hit whip tongue against your loved ones, make sure that you chase them jackal out of your desert life, clip their achilles heel. you are their achilles heel, their weak spot, their burden and their softness.
4. form your mouth into a lie, say you’re sick, split bridges like firewood. don’t show up to work, feel bad you skipped, skip every day in succession. give up on going. they’ve probably filled your place. how would you explain this anyway? a head in place and all bones supported by good sinew - god, sometimes, doesn’t the ring of a gunshot sound like bells to you, at least then you’d have an excuse - listen, stay home. stay in your vulture nest where the little baby birds of your desires are long gone, the quiet faithful dead. they won’t ask you why you no longer feel happiness, they understand silence, they understand blankness. maybe one day the bills will come with their sharpness and beaks open and hungry, but for now, they are a burden you cannot carry.
5. become scribble, a person with undefinition, an unclarity. is there something out there to burn down this house with? take it, light yourself with. it’s not alcoholism if nobody is around to see it. it’s not selfharm if it’s a cry for attention. it’s just sex, it’s just sixty-four straight hours of netflix, it’s just that you sort of doubt you ever felt anything. the world happened to a different person, you are just keeping the shell of that soul warm. when your mother cries about the spiral you’re clipped-wing stuck in, tell her: i’m okay. the words will sound cotton in your mouth and you’ll be post-dentist mouth-numb. it will be great. if you’re really really lucky, nobody will smell the decay. stuff yourself with cheesewhizz with emptiness with pocket lint shove everything into a bag and take off running eat the sun up to fill up that god awful nothing eat up your life in little clipped bites if it breaks you well that’s just fine our lord and savior jesus christ never intended for sheep like you don’t you know you’re a selfish piece of shit everybody knows that you’re faking it the sky outside is beautiful just go for a run do yoga do something fun after all there are children starving on some other continent and all you are doing is sitting here in that bed shoving your emotions into the darkness, a finger jamming a dam hole, a soul trying to spoon the water out of the boat except every time you do so you let just a little bit more of you go oh god ohgodohgod how you want to let it all go
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9. is there a n y thin g le ft
or am i just
th i s ;
a hum a n
mess
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13. call your mom. tell her you’re sorry, when she says, “what for,” say, “everything.” hang up with hands shaking and a heart that jostles against your breastplate. feel strangely alive for the first time in months. get all of your affairs in order, write a “sorry” note, kiss the envelope.
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20. wash the hospital out of your hair.
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22. call your mom. tell her, “thank you,” tell her that yesterday you tried her recipe for casserole, and she was right. it really does taste better with green beans on the side.
23. when you’re ready, come outside.
