Almost always

You can pretend it doesn't matter, and maybe in the long run it doesn't. The black tracks on your hand that linger long after you've washed off any trace of them. The ones on your face are easier to get rid of. Everyone expects the tears, yet it's the hands that are easier to ignore. You're alone, completely and utterly alone. You can pretend it hits you hardest when you're hurting, when you desperately want to crawl out of your skin and lie curled up on the floor numb to the pain. Numb to everything, even the pervasive feeling of numbness and indifference that fills every moment that is absent of pain. It hits you during the numbness as well, it's just - well you're numb to it. Until you're not. You convince yourself your solitude is self-inflicted, although that's not entirely true. What is the other option? To know that after every hell hole and basement you've crawled out of, that all the hope and dreams that sustained you while you were there were all for nothing? That nothing would be better? That you're no longer crippled by circumstance and ''evil'' anymore yet still burn? That you deserve to burn? That you failed? That even while you're having these realizations you're hiding behind the pathetic flimsy veil of the second person pronoun because you still can't say the words ''I failed, I fail and I will continue to fail''. They ring true. Perhaps that's because I want them to be. Maybe I would just like to accept that they are true and stop trying. I have been trying for so long, I'd like to stop now please. I am tired. I'm tired of angry, I'm tired of sad, I'm tired of whatever new emotion I concoct and throw at the already self loathing pile of broken fragments that lie where the mirror used to be. I want to trust someone but there's no one to let me. I can't thing of one way to say that, without sounding like a moody teenager ranting that the world doesn't understand them. That's not what this is. I know the world doesn't understand me, not because I'm so unique and a special little snowflake, but because it doesn't matter. I don't care who does or doesn't understand me, it's irrelevant and it's not going to change anything, it's not what I want. I just want it to stop. I want to stop. It won't though. I won't.
The pain is much less frequent than it used to be. The nonchalance and emptiness comes sooner and lasts longer than before. Soon these tears will stop, my head will stop twisting, my hair will stop vibrating and my hands wont burn quite so much anymore. The roaring in my ears will settle to nothingness. I'll wash the black tracks from my face and stand under hot water for just slightly longer than is recommended. It will be as it always is and I'll almost forget. If I look closely at my hands the invisible black is there. I always almost forget.