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My Brain Lies

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

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Writers throw up their sickness in their books. Oh, I would that that were true. If that were true, maybe I would be rid of the illness by now, the cloying darkness that seeps through into every nook and cranny of my soul, leaving nothing. Nothing is sacred and my brain is sly and conniving, hardly coy. It knows what it's doing as much as I try to stop it, to call halt to these old patterns, abusive patterns, patterns that have sunk their claws into me time after time again.

Lockdown, lockdown... There's too much time to think and the lies abound.

You're not safe here.

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But I am.

Something bad is coming.

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If it does, I will handle it.

You're going to lose everything.

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I'm not.

Fear. Day in and day out. I can set it aside, if only for a time, but this is not the sort of fear that is ever forgotten. It's icy and hot, comforting in its familiarity even though I wish for nothing more than to see the back of it forever. It has no place here and yet it is here, snarling and seething, driving wicked claws into my soul, hooked and tearing through what makes me...me.

Hold fast. Stay the course. This is not you. This is not who you are.

But I'm me and not me, not the me that I was back then, the me that I was ashamed of, weak and useless, drowning and gasping for air. I did everything I could, back then, to get the air that I needed, a little gulp of it just to keep going, and it left me with "a steel inside". That was something, strangely, that an interview for a job that I didn't get said to me but it's something that's stuck with me. It was as if he saw straight through, seeing through the lies that my own brain presented to me as fact, saw something deeper.

I liked that. I liked that, back then, someone could see something more in me, even if it was something that perhaps should have remained hidden under such circumstances. And it was only later that I would find just how well that strength would serve me, even though my brain and the wolf amid the flock of sheep whispered that I shouldn't be strong, that it made me weak. Yes, it made me weak because then I was less able to serve the needs of the one, the controller, the be all and end all of days spent aching and nights spent haunting, a ghost of myself.

Maybe I never wanted to be steel. Maybe I wanted to be soft. Maybe I didn't ever need to have so many spikes and snarls, all for the purposes of keeping people away. If only I'd never met you, maybe I'd be different. I know that I'd be different. Wishing isn't going to change that even as I try to find the person that I want to be, right here and right now.

Everyone hates you. No one will ever like you. Even I don't like you, but I stay with you. Look how good I am, look how kind I am, look how wonderful I am. Everyone loves me, so just what's wrong with you?

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Leave. Get out. No one wants you here - but you reflect that back at me too, the voices in my head, voices from an older time, a different time, a more sorrowful time that I'm never going back to. I closed the door and got out - but memories linger even if they may not be here to stay.

He's coming to get you...

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Fuck off.

It'll never last. What do you think you're worth, living this life like you have any right to it? Just fucking kill yourself. Everyone will be better off without you. No one wants you here.

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Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off.

I am who I am, living my life regardless of who thinks I shouldn't be living. No one would have wanted me dead because that would have removed their control over me and, oh, they couldn't have that. I'd be gone then, not available to meet their needs, and that's all I was good for back then.

Use and abuse. It was so easy then. For me to let it happen, not to do it myself. But you tell one story and the liar of my brain twists it, coming from the mouths of others, lips hooked into wicked smiles, no warmth reaching their eyes. They surround me on all sides, screaming and hissing, a writhing mass of demons that are only interested in bringing me down, twisting my truth into their truth and another truth again that is so far removed from the original that I don't know how it got there in the first place.

If someone says something about me, that makes it true...right? If I think it, that makes it true...right? If I dream it, twist and turn in the arms of a nightmare, that makes it true...right?

No so. So. Whatever. One story has many sides and every story weaves into one another. Perception, however, can twist a truth and the lips of liars speak sweetly of the wrongs perceived.

The skeleton hangs, the eyes dark and gaping, pits for worms, the bones picked clean. I shudder away.

No.No. Not now. Out. Get out. Out, out, out.

No matter how many times I wash my hands, sanitise and soap up, I'll never wash the perceived blood from them, water streaming red as I scrub them raw. There was no wrong but, to my brain, there may as well have been. It makes up its own rules, you see, and I spend days and nights clawing the thoughts away, slicing through them and casting them out, exorcising my demons. The problem is that these demons are persistent and I have no reason to think that they will be gone for good anytime soon.

Lies and truths and I'll spend my life unravelling one from the other, fighting off what has no place here, striving for a life where there are no lies. But the lies come from inside now as well as external forces and it doesn't matter whether I'm clinging to a cave wall in a slate mine or pounding through a workout: they are there. They seethe and they roil and all I can do is turn my brain from them every time it strives to shove them into my line of sight, my active thoughts and the forefront of my mind.

No, I say. You have no place here. Close the door, shut it out. Snip the balloon strings, if needed, to let the thought float away, not to return. If it does not need to be inspected and considered, I don't need to leave it behind a door to be thought about later. It can be let go. And that's what I'm striving to do, every balloon holding a memory as it floats up and up and up into the darkness of a sky that holds so many secrets that even I'm afraid to see what is to be revealed.

Breathe. Stay fast. All will come to pass.

That is what I choose to believe.

But my brain still lies.