To slowly lose the ability to do both the big and the little things in life, to be the hand who carves out pieces of his own heart and surrenders them to the invisible and uncaring Nothing is the most painful way to be driven to extreme withdrawal.
I used to be able to do so many things that defined who I am to so many people and to myself. Neither my body nor my mind was ever at rest. When they were motionless, they were fueling up for more. They were either doing or preparing to do. Profound mental disability, however, has a way of taking everything away and making a person feel so useless that they willingly give up more than is being stolen away by the Nothing; they give up on themselves.
Now, years have passed and I have almost no friends left because I am not able to be as they had painted me when I was alive. Family…understanding and support are scarce with them as well. Profound mental illness is an evil acid that burns before the hand cuts the heart to ribbons, while the hand cuts the heart to ribbons and long after the hand has cut the heart to ribbons. I am unable to do what made me who I was, so with “Me” gone, I have been left alone in my misery.
Rather than hitting the pitch black and jagged rocks at the bottom, I landed someplace where there is hardly anyone who shares my sense of anything. Not morals, ethics and beliefs, not histories, not goals…not a thing. They are a culture of parasites that complains and blames the host after they have bled him dry. They spit seething lies when the host decides to abandon them for a healthier life. But year after year of having no choice but to live among those parasites has left my mind so lacking in resource and finesse that coarse, imprecise reactions are all I have left.
Whether I was becoming as uncaring as they are or whether I was feeling so blindingly repulsed by them that it just felt that way, I have no idea. What I do know is that the drive to differentiate myself from them as poignantly and aggressively as possible has consumed me. The parasites are allowed to be the antisocial antithesis of me, but they become upset and cry “foul!” when I stand up as the antithesis of them; I want them to experience exactly how different than me they really are. I want them to feel pain. I want them to die a parasite’s death.
To become demonstrably distinct and undeniably not-them, I am listing what I am and what I was, and what they are not. I am taking that list and using their most prominent ugliness against them, doing whatever it takes to benefit me and hurt them.
Among other things, I am getting back into shape, though not for the sake of health. Rather, it is with the intent of shining a very bright light on their poorly managed bodies and their slothful minds. I want to raise the standard so high that not one of these parasites will ever be able to reach it. I want them to feel the burning of the spotlight, and I want them to feel the pain they have caused me.
Fitness is one of those things that I had planned to work back into my life gently, organically, as I was able, but now I am engaging in it for unhealthy reasons and in unhealthy ways. I know this will reinforce bad motives and taint for a long time that which has been a deeply personal part of me for almost thirty years. It is being violated. It is being perverted. And it could lead to self-destruction. It may work against what I am trying to accomplish, smearing too much grease on the rungs of my already impossible-to-climb ladder.
Update: Through therapy, self-care and support, I have been able to turn fitness back into something productive and healthful.
Marcus & His Human 
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