Perfectionist Rehab

I hold onto memories and emotion,

The proof in my muscles, frozen.

I like to say I’m not one to keep a grudge,

Hurt sticks to my pan like burnt-on fudge.

I want to let things go, I really do,

But after all the things I’ve been through,

My mind searches for patterns alike,

In kin and foe, and the irksome strikes,

The muscle seizes, and my breath catches,

Burned alive by the single matches,

Of a clumsy turn of phrase,

Wholly blind to praise.

They call it confirmation bias,

When truth is contorted by us,

To prove an opinion guarded below,

Regardless of what circumstances show,

To be real, right in front of our little noses,

Unable to control the seas like Moses,

We struggle and drown, stuck in the riptide,

The current disrupts the insides.

The problem with guarding facts or misuse,

Or of each time we needed tissues,

Is that it robs us of the moments we should in revere,

This is why I wish they’d disappear.

I’m sick of bracing,

I’m sick of wasting,

My days and my minutes watching for threats,

Searching for foes and harmful pests,

Beneath every surface, hiding in crowds,

For what is a sky without clouds?

I fear when people get too close,

So I pick a fight, or make a joke gross,

It’s like I’ve a sign, fluorescent and humming,

Don’t try to anticipate what’s next coming.

I’m mysterious! Aloof! I’m simply hilarious,

Which may be why I find myself in precarious,

Situations, it’s true, I’ve often bargained my life,

Because calm is terrifying, so I filled my pipe,

With self-deprecating humor, and disparaged my own,

Self for control before me you’d disown.

My drug is self-hatred, how could you even see,

When I shimmer and shine confidently.

I learned recently that dark humor,

Is attention seeking behavior.

I accept that is true, though when I reflect,

That analysis I once would certainly deflect,

Because jokes were my armor, they kept me sane,

While I pondered and focused on my inane,

Turns of phrase to avoid the chasm below,

With crudeness and rudeness, you’d never know,

How much I cared about each person I met,

How every calamity leaves me upset,

For empathy is the vice you’re gifted,

To someone else your focus shifted.

It’s easier to be a sounding board,

Than to suffer of your own accord.

They say that the degree you can understand,

Is correlated to how much self you can withstand.

It’s easy to judge if you avert your gaze,

From the exact same way that you behave.

Misery loves company, but not to dwell,

Often I used people to stop the swell,

The tears, the anger, the constant struggle

So instead I built a warehouse out of rubble,

To house others problems so I could avoid my own,

And perhaps this is why I am prone,

To giving away every shining scale,

Like the fish in that children’s tale.

Give away everything you have, or else,

Entirely alone you will find yourself.

So I serve, so I bend, so I accommodate,

I accomplish, I absorb, I anticipate,

I ignore all my needs,

Silence my screams.

No one is coming, that’s the truth,

But I want someone to save me too.