10 Things I Hate about Myself

Number 1: The way that my body reflects off the silver pane of the mirror. Standing there like it actually deserves to inhabit the space that it does. The way that it takes too much space in the form of fat. The way that it stares back at me in pure shock, asking why did I put so many deep, red lines across it.

Number 2: My inability to finish everything. How my poems are always half written. How I can never bring myself to learn how to draw the beautiful, perfect woman that I’ll never meet. How I’m so afraid of actually following through on anything. How I always leave conversations half way through because I’m scared that it will end without me wanting it to. How I never could actually commit suicide.

Number 3: How my body doesn’t have as much blood as it should. When I run, I get too winded too easily. I have to take deeper breaths to truly feel the oxygen. I have to cut deeper in order to get the satisfaction of the blood pouring out from the corners, around my arm, and dropping all the way to the floor.

Number 4: I can’t talk to people. They’re there, but I can’t approach a soul. When I do, every fiber of my being screams out in unison to not. Each step closer to somebody makes my body writhe even harder, trying to pull me away. They call it the fight-or-flight response, and I always decide to take flight. They never will like nor accept me, and I can’t face that threat head-on.

Number 5: I fall in love way too easily. If I can even talk to a person, their frame is the only thing in my mind for weeks on end. I relish in the image for hours, getting addicted to it like it was a cigarette pressed between my lips, while I imagine that the cigarette was actually their lips. The image crashes after its glory once the embers burn me back into reality.

Number 6: I can’t write. I attempt it like I’m attempting it right now but to quote myself, “My writing is so damn awful I wouldn't even touch it with a 39 and a half foot pole, to quote Dr. Seuss.” Each line that I construct is a long pole jammed into my body that reminds me how I can’t even write, how I can’t even create anything worth anything; a task that humans have been doing for millennia.

Number 7: I am like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Friedrich Nietzsche, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato because I think. The ideas that swirl around the air for others so fast that they take no notice can be chained down to me, for me to pick apart with every surgical scalpel and clamp at my disposal. As a result, I myself am chained down.

Number 8: I can’t sleep. The voices that ring in my ears, that don't come from me, swarm around me. The screams that wake me from my slumber are yelling at the person who I am, or rather who I am not. Nobody is up at the waning hours of night to talk to me about my inability to sleep, because they do not share it.

Number 9: No matter what I do, I can’t do it. Everything I’ve ever picked up in my life, I’ve been mediocre at best. While some are able to do 2 double layout full outs in succession on a balance beam, I can’t walk on flat pavement without my toes turning in. While some people are able to shoot basket after basket at the three-point line, I can’t throw a single dart. While some people are able to love themselves, I can’t.

Number 10: The thing that I hate the most about myself, is that I could have written so much more.