Martyrs for Nothing

People like us are everywhere, just in different forms.

There are those who are half-orphaned and dripping in wealth, soaking the wounds of deep, psychological scars in painkillers and pricey gin in European bars, while absent guardians neither inquire of their whereabouts nor their existence.

And there are the others who are caged misfits, knitted woolen gloves worn in the desert. Stuffed hurriedly into small towns and ordinary suburbs here and there, chained to duty at a young age and stifled by company for their entire lives. Those for whom the ordinary cannot satiate, but can find no easy way out.

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." There are those who are accepting of their desperation. There are those do not know of their desperation.

And there are those who are desperate enough to self-destruct.

Desperate for that dreamlike sort of parallel existence they've slowly crafted for themselves, but now cannot access. They see it every second of every day, like a reflection in a long, endless mirror that follows their every step.

It's behind the glass door they're gripping at, on which their fingertips leave oily streaks.

They sit on one side of the door gazing into the other, imagining, going mad with their delusions, the delirium their inventions have caused them. Going mad because they cannot get through.

So they throw to break the glass. First everything around them, then everyone around them, and then, when what is in the real world is left in pieces of shattered glass and debris and the wall stands unmoved and resolute,

they throw themselves.

Scratching, then pounding, then kicking, then slamming. Until they're nothing but pulped flesh and liquified bone.

And it's only then, if they're conscious enough to be aware of it, that they can seep under the cracks to the other side.

But in most cases, they're not conscious enough. Because at that point, they've already lost sight of what is real and what is not.

At that point, their imaginations are the only reality left, the reality they're left to die in.

At that point, they've succeeded,

succeeded in living a transcendant life that few others can fathom, succeeded in fulfilling some grandiose idea of the ultimate end result of passion, of insanity.

Martyrs. Society gives them all sorts of names and then locks them up, maybe medicates them, maybe ostracizes them.

Suicidal, schizophrenic, depressed, crazy, strange.

But perhaps they are the only ones left who know how to fight.

Perhaps, ironically, they are the only ones left who know how to live.