Why are you still asleep?
Why are you still awake?
Why are you not doing something productive?
It is always there,
judging me,
draining the life out of me.
But who is it?
It never leaves,
so it must be me.
No one else is with me all the time.
Since when do I do this to myself?
And why?
Am I the only one living in this self-imprisonment?
Was I forced into it once,
locked inside a prison built by a harsh guard,
who seemed to count every breath I took?
Whether he ever did or not doesn't matter now.
My subjective reality was reality.
But he is gone,
and still I remain in the same cell.
Why?
Was his voice so loud that it still echoes?
Was his presence so heavy that it still weighs on me?
Somewhere along the way,
I internalized him.
I became him.
I started doing to myself
what he once did to me.
It sounds ridiculous
and painfully true.
I became both prisoner and guard.
Those were the only roles I ever saw,
so I believed they were the only ones that existed.
Life has always been just outside these bars,
so close,
yet impossibly far.
What does it feel like to live without this voice?
To breathe without waiting for permission?
To survive, I silenced myself.
All I heard was his critique.
I kept waiting for his absence to begin living.
But he never truly left,
because I carried him with me.
Somewhere along the way,
I became a devoted student
to the guard of my own prison.
How absurd.
And how painfully true.