Stare into the mirror. While you can, admire your true self—no, pity it because it's too weak and pathetic to show to the rest of society.

The remnants of tears will stay stuck in your eyes, fighting an endless battle against your hardened heart. You lean over to stare at the ground, your gaze looking at a sea of marble too goddamn empty that it's dizzy and seeing nothing through the haze of self-deprecation and tears that hang over your vision.

You know you can't stop, and you know you would never do that. No matter how many times you hear the same, robotic words of comfort—it's normal to compare yourself with others, it's normal to feel sad—and they're useless because if that's so, why do you still feel like this?

Your heart is—

An illusion of a battlefield, countless tiny wars breaking out every hour over the simplest thing like an uttered sentence, a decision made; it is a broken mirror left unfixed, with tiny fragments of metaphorical glass embedding themselves in your (already fragile) mind.

An abandoned shell of a safe house, perhaps, but it is now invaded by corruption and monsters that prey on every last bit of it.

Yes, you have abandoned it. It is easier to live by the cold logic and numbing ways of reality; it is easier to ignore the distant thuds of your screaming heart and pretend that you are fine. Your heart is a dangerous place—it is best not to trust it.

It would be alright, you try to tell yourself, you won't be hurt by the greatest monster of all. You can just live stuck in this purgatory, losing sight of any colour and torturing yourself with this self-inflicted achromatic—you've thrown away your heart, haven't you?

Somewhere deep down, you know that you're being stupid. You can't help it, though. You know it's all just a figment of your imagination, wild tales of hurt and despise spun by the fibres of your mind, but that doesn't make it any less painful.

If it's normal compare yourself to others, then is it fine to feel useless? To be trapped in some endless cycle and destroy yourself with words that you've produced?

To live in a container of your own heart, catching glimpses of some faraway light that you'll never reach?

In the end, this has been lost from the very start. Your heart has been degraded to nonsense, and you try to tell yourself that you've already thrown it all away; that you feel nothing, that all these arguments are absurd and meaningless—

—but the cycle will repeat. It's really quite convenient: build a thin wall of lies and live behind it until it gets broken down, right?

So, while you can, cry. Wish that your heart could be be destroyed and defiled, let your lies scatter; feel like you want to disappear all you like. Wail out like the scared child you are; wail for the pain to go away because you wished for none of it.

These thoughts will all become meaningless under the numbness, and you turn off the switch for your emotions once again as you step out.