van diemen’s land

M Brennan Finn
Aug 24, 2017 · 3 min read

I think some people are not meant to have happy lives. I think I am one of them. I am trapped in a body I never wanted in a place in don’t belong. The times I’ve actually felt in control of my own life are virtually non existent. My soul died a long time ago and I’m working to accept that I may be irreparably damaged by how much cruelty I’ve experienced and how little agency I’ve had in my life thus far.

I want to believe I can heal, but I don’t think it’s realistic. I’m not as young as I seem. I internalized my own lack of worth and lovability a very long time ago and every time I have made advancements in the area of self esteem it gets ripped away from me and i get dashed on the fucking rocks and told its what i deserve.

Setbacks feel more and more like death sentences. I don’t spring back like I used to. Every day I’m revisited by searing and visceral memories that disrupt my ability to live my life. It doesn’t get better.

In order for time to heal a wound, one must first have a linear perception of time. The ability to discern between past and present is one of many things repeated trauma takes away from a person. I am doomed me to float forever through various dimensions . Not just through past and present, but through conjecture and conclusion, through phantom and remembered pain, through facets of a fractured ego.

It’s like there are all these severed pieces of me flung throughout a long, winding river that can never be dredged nor its depths adequately plumbed. I am banished to a place that can never be reached, because it is an Inbetween place. The quiet cavity between the drywall and the concrete, a pause between sobs, the place where the poison lives beneath the layers of my skin. You don’t see me, just signs of my continued existence. I am not so much a person as I am an echo — a disembodied reverberation of palpable screaming. Mirrors facing mirrors inside of mirrors.

You cannot cleave me from that which created me.

Have you been to where I live? This Time Prison? I see you pass over sometimes. My calls get lost in the wind. I give up, I spiral out. I lay belly up, beached, and bloated on a stupid tepid shoreline where my tears carve these shallow rivulets through the sand and into the sea where they become the water become the salt air become my own hands become my blood become your face and mine until I am emptied into the world and the world is emptied into me. Emotional decomposition.

Have you been to where I live? Can you even read my handwriting? Sometimes I’m so far away I can’t even find my own voice, I can’t speak, can’t form my lips around pain so big it cracks my skin. I wish I could bury myself underground until I forget everything. I wish I could moult, break through my own deadness. I wish I could start all over.

Elba has nothing on this Hell, but maybe it’s because I’m already gone.

)
M Brennan Finn

Written by

itinerant wordsmith ; loose cannon

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade