THINGS THAT EAT ME ALIVE by Rae Pathak

"THINGS THAT EAT ME ALIVE"
by  Rae Pathak

"You have been like this for the longest time—suffering, mothering grief, living with regrets.

You feel like you have learned your lesson, then you make the same mistakes again—risking your heart, risking being misunderstood, risking being hated—all of it in the hopes that maybe someday, someone will be able to understand you.

Anger? Not really.

Disappointment? Perhaps.

For you let go of something that was good for you for something that you could love, and now you have neither.

There are no instant relief methods to this illness. Melancholy, like a tandem passenger, sits behind you as you pedal forward alone. Would it have been easier if there were love? Maybe.

But then love, too, has been a difficult subject all through your life. You have only known hunger. Just caring wasn't enough. Just loving wasn't either. You needed more. Even when there was enough love, you were hungry for more. You are a glutton who doesn't know how to stop.

There was an empty space inside you that grew more and more each time you were loved. Some sort of sadness sits inside it. You don't pray, but sometimes, you wish for someone to make you whole. All your life, you have had this empty feeling. Even when you were laughing, there was this lingering heartache—a sorrow without a source.

If you really could run, you'd run away to home. But you have run for so long, you aren't sure where home is supposed to be anymore. You tell yourself sometimes that maybe there is no home. We all just exist. What you mean is that if there was a home, why does it escape you? Why does everyone know that feeling but you?

You wished your body were a city. Then it could be ruined and reconstructed. The body is a thing without an exit. Once you are alive, you have to keep living until you die. There's no escape, no way to skip parts you do not like. You hope this anguish leaves you before your cold body is buried in the ground. At least once, you'd like to know what it's like being perfectly happy.

In the past, you have always wanted to fix yourself. If there were a time machine, you would have travelled to the past and erased all that went wrong. But would it be enough to make everything okay? At the crux of it all, you hoped for acceptance—for yourself. And change. It wouldn't fix anything, but all you have wanted was to not mourn yourself so terribly.

At the very least, for once, you'd like to learn to live with yourself."

— Rae Pathak, things that eat me alive

Follow at Instagram.com/raepathak

Illustration by Haylee Morice

Inspired Diane Wakoski & Zhao

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