On Betrayal and Neurosis

I can't tell if I actually care,
or if I'm pretending for us both.

Every night I wake up sweating.
Is it the addiction, or you?

My spine suffers from this perpetual...
"Ache". Oh how I hate standing, how
I wish I could lie down.

For this moment, I am not me.
I am a perverse, otherworldly take on myself.
I am Goldilocks, as imagined by someone who has not read the story, only heard loose

reccountings of it. My body shivers as I sweat. If I strip, I grow ever colder. If I wear

more, I sweat further as the fever rakes my body over the coals of this perverse fire.

This is not you.
Don't worry.

This is me, the cumulation of me,
the essence that is my character.
Distilled, purified, over time.

Allow me to direct my address inward, it was presumptuous of me to speak to you as such

initially.

This feeling, in the back of my neck, it compels me.
Not in a direction; to a task.
In the past, I ignored it.
Recently, I have been more tempted than normal.

My skin is too tight right now.
I don't know how to fix it.
But I have this constricted feeling,
all over my body.
As though I were a snake,
in need of shedding its flesh.
But I am no snake.

My thoughts aren't connected right now, and for that, I apologize.

I feel this sense of being lost
that only freedom can give.
I beg for the leash, the collar.
By surrendering control, I feel
that I can finally accomplish
Something.

My mouth feels dry every morning.
I may have said this already,
I honestly can't tell.
But water doesn't seem to help,
though mentally — consciously — I know it does.
It only feels better after I've been awake for a time, however.
I am not sure if this is a metaphor
or a simile
or a coincidence.
I was always bad at linguistics.

My eyes burn.
I don't know how they can be this dry.
It stings.
I would massage the pain away.
But touching them hurts more.
I feel that, if I cried,
that would bring moisture to them.
But we all know
I don't cry
very much.

I think I might be going deaf.
Or perhaps I am just
preoccupied
but
everything I hear is quieter now.
Maybe the world is going silent.

All of my senses, truly.
They are failing me.
I think
it is because
my body thinks I'm dying.
Because of the signals my brain sends out.

One thing I know for certain;
if I could but drink, it would all be irrelevant.
For then I would finally have the will to commit.

But we all know I don't have the strength of character for that.