TW: “Black Eyes”

*****Trigger Warning*****

Triggers include: depression, anger, feelings of Despair and hopelessness, torment, defeat, multiple deaths, suicidal ideation, and mention of a severe auto accident.

This post contains numerous triggers and may be difficult for some people to read. If you are in a state where you feel you are more vulnerable to external influences than normal, I would recommend either waiting until you feel more secure before you read this or make sure someone that can ensure your well-being is present. Perhaps the following is not as bad as I make it sound, but I have added this paragraph based on the reaction of someone who read this previously.

The picture (see profile picture) started out because of my love of Supernatural, but as the weeks have gone by I have come to realize they are also a reflection of how I feel inside. For those that are not familiar with the show Supernatural, characters with eyes that are solid black, red, white or yellow are demons. The show tells you that a demon is created from a human soul that has been tortured in hell until nothing is left but a black smoke.

That is how I feel at times, like my very soul has been tortured and stripped raw in hell. I feel at times that if someone were to look into my eyes, truly look into them, that they would see the pain and death in them.

Most of the people in my life, have no idea of the death I carry inside, no matter how close they are to me. Over the years, I have learned to hide a lot of my pain from most people. The people that know me from my younger years never saw this part of me, because it didn’t exist then, it didn’t start forming until around the time I started high school.

I do not think the people I went to high school with saw it that much either, at least they had no idea of the depths of the pain, by the time I got to college, I had learned to hide it.

There are a lot of things that contributed to the stripping away of my soul.  Oddly, one of the smaller parts being the fact that I am a mental health consumer. Being a mental health consumer has just taken things to a new level and exasperated the problems, rather than being the main cause of them I feel.

Two of the biggest contributors have been the “decade of death”, a period of about ten years (maybe even a few more) where between my mother’s side of the family and my father’s side of the family, someone died every year, including my mother ten years ago in December.

The second major contributor started seven years ago. I was involved with someone online that meant everything to me. One night I said something to her in an email, out of concern for her because of her actions the night before. The next thing I knew I found out she almost bled to death because she had a flashback to a traumatic event. Ever since that night, even to this day, I have blamed myself for her near death. A few years later, my wife and I were in a bad car accident that almost killed my wife. I cannot help but feel like I am a danger to people I love.

The rage inside me, the rage that comes out at times, the yelling, screaming, throwing things, the bouts of self-harm, all leave me feeling like a monster or a demon at times. Other times, I just feel dead inside. I have sat there against the door, against the cabinets, against the wall, crying and begging for my heart to just explode because I wanted to die. I have sat there desperately wanting to kill myself but something inside of me, for better or worse, preventing me from seriously trying. My inability to try has, during those moments made me feel like an even bigger failure. A bigger failure, because I couldn’t even try to kill myself.

There is so much more that goes on in my day to day life that contributes to my problems that makes things even worse. There are times when I do not feel like I am part of this world. I feel like I am trapped outside of life and looking in on everyone else. I feel totally detached from life. Other times, I see nothing my darkness and pain around me as far as the eye can see.

I see other people happy, sometimes I feel like I remember being happy at one point in my life. Other times, I feel rage and hatred at the world over it because I want to be happy and no matter how much I try, no matter what I do, I feel like I keep getting kicked between the legs. Every time things start to turn around and look like life is getting on track, something else kicks me down. How much can one human being take?