Not enough. Never enough.

The words echo, each syllable slips past the confines of my ribcage to press against the quivering, aching mass of my battered heart. They brand me. The letters painstakingly carve into my flesh over and over again by the very glob of neurons meant to keep me going and healthy. An endless product of my mind. 

I know. I know. 

How many times do I have to be told just how special I am before they decide that the soundtrack of my mind is actually the truth?

As if you could make anything worth seeing.

My fingers tremble, darkened with ink that seems impossible to avoid. Aching with the desire to just give up. Each breath feels hard won through the barricade that has become of my throat. All I can hope for is to keep from letting my tears stain the page under my hand. 

Don’t half ass it.

They tease me. When is it ever enough?

Salt sears the sensitive edge of my lower lids. My heart beat throbs erratically as I grit my teeth against the need to sob. I dip the nib of the pen toward the page, but it stops. Hovers uselessly in the air centimeters above the finely crafted paper.

Why should you have the right to change this page forever?

It strikes me in the core. Of course, my own mind knows the way to best weaken me. What gives me any right? My chest aches ceaselessly, threatening to rebel at the lack of oxygen and turn me inside out. The world around me goes fuzzy and grey beneath the onslaught of agony. I disappear into the sensations within that feel so much more real than everything else. 

Sharp and precise, my skin burns with the remembered ease of slicing through it with an oh-so-thin blade. Brutal red bubbles within my mind.

Just once more.

Disgust drenches me. It curdles my stomach and sends bile ricocheting against the walls. Every day something new beckons to the void yawning in my cavernous vault of a chest. 

Simple pain, enlarge it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it. 

On that same endless loop my brain seems beyond happy to rend me in twain, so I grab those fraying threads. Wrap my fingers in them until their florid with the aching pressure of blood beneath the surface.

As long as I just keep it beneath the surface. 

It's the first helpful thought my mind has offered today. I mould the promise of hope that it offers to the letters branded into the most delicate corners of my being. The cool salve of them seeps through the raw edges. Slick as oil, it forms to my wounds, warming with each breath that passes my lips. That warmth disperses under the surface of my skin. Bleeding tension from each chord of muscle. It gentles the shaking in my hands, and my fingers ease enough to finally kiss the nib of the pen against the page.

Words swirl past the blockade I have made for myself. They hurt and they sting. They burn away the most fragile remnants of my cooling salve and paint themselves across the page with my blood racing behind them. The tempo of my heart picks up alongside the swishing of my pen and together they build on that shattered symposium my mind has proffered.

Each letter softens the ache.

Each word slithers past my defenses.

Each syllable arches to the next and strings itself to my core.

Inky black, that darkest center of my mind retreats under the onslaught of prose and imagery. Every atom of my body quivers in time with the arching of my pen. Hope paints itself into my creases. Drips slowly to my valleys. The world on the page flickers to life under the careful ministrations of my stained glass soul.