Disconnect / The Destruction of a Person

I feel alone.

I've felt this way before, a million times or more.

I've felt the ripping pain and agony and wanting to not exist.

I've felt the strains of sanity tear and break.

I've felt the hopelessness, emptiness, darkness, bleakness.

But now, I feel it all and I feel nothing.

This "alone" is an exile.

I was a freak... I am a freak.

But now I feel nothing.

I hate my freak clothing, my style... myself.

The being that is, the being that was, me.

It no longer seems to be me.

I have stepped away from everything,

I have stepped out of what I was.

I have stepped out of what I believe I am.

I see, for the first time, the outside of my world.

The goths, the punks, the metalheads... I see outside my protective world.

See them all as a large group where I belonged.

Where I used to belong.

Where I think I belong.

The exile I've entered is one that I wonder is self-imposed.

The only one who could have sent me away was myself.

Or it could have been a new sense of maturity, although I doubt it.

This exile is painful, lonely, and heartbreaking.

This exile is not being alive.

This exile is a suicide.

And I am in exile.

-Larry West, 9/18/2008