the world is spinning around me,
people talking, laughing, doing. 
music plays but my ears don’t notice,
my hands are busy wrapping presents
but my mind isn’t there.

everything is in a fog:
people, places, noise, emotion.
i’m lost in this haze
between reality and insanity,
because apparently i can’t just have one
or the other.

in my mind all is silent,
though at the same time i’m screaming.
i’m alone, no, i’m stuck in a crowd…
no, now i’m in my boyfriend’s arms.
i don’t know where i am. 
i’m safe at home or with him,
then suddenly i’m back in the hell
of my freshman year.
or back in the captivity
of residential treatment.

and then everything is still and that’s even worse
because there is absolutely nothing 
in my mind.
nothing tangible, nothing real, nothing at all.
just empty space, but even less than that. 
simply… nothing. 

and now i’m terrified
and i watch as my hands
carefully fold wrapping paper
of their own accord.

i’m not controlling my body,
i’m not even in my body.
i don’t know where i am but it
is terrifying.

and i watch the hands tear a piece of tape
off of the dispenser 
and wonder vaguely what would happen
if they took that serrated edge 
to the the fair skin on the arms.

but the hands continue folding,
wrapping, taping. 
not stopping, on autopilot. 
because now the girl
is just a body without a soul,
without a heart or spirit or even mind.

i watch the girl go through the motions,
for the moment forgetting
that i am nothing.
that she isn’t me anymore, 
that i don’t really even
exist.

and i keep hoping that somehow
she’ll accidentally hurt herself
or one of her kittens 
attacks a little too roughly and draws blood.
because somehow i think that maybe, 
just maybe,
the pain would bring the two of us 
back together;
her empty shell of a form,
and my formless consciousness.

and suddenly she’s gone, 
completely gone.
and i seem to be, too. 
just a disembodied thought – 
if that – 
floating in this realm of nonexistence. 

somehow i know
that she is still there,
tethered to being
like i am to nothingness
but that doesn’t matter anymore
because even if i’m trapped
at least the absence of the pain
is better than the hell 
that i have had to endure.

this i keep saying to myself,
but i’m fighting a losing battle.
living the way i have been hurts
like nothing I have ever known.
but this emptiness, this void… 
drains me of all life. 
funny though, how either way
i’d rather be dead.

but here i suppose, 
the ‘i’ is relative. 
for in nothingness,
i cannot even exist. 
and in reality, 
the girl cannot be me
because she is simply a drone, 
a soulless body,
an automaton.
but if both of these are true, 
then what – or who – or where – 
am i?

note: i also posted this poem on deviantART.com under the username kmills95. http://fav.me/d6yw7rc