Ashley On Her Way Down     

If I hadn’t been such a sucker for punishment then I would be absolutely miserable right now. Call it a sick trifling experiment of mine to suffer at the hands of something beyond my control. Like being madly obsessed with someone who is a companion and nothing more. Not a friend, because that would mean sharing experiences and feelings and that is too depressing for my nature. Maybe that is why she did not feel a thing for me because I was guarded, but I liked the arms length relationship.

So why do I feel so sad all the time when the subject of Kate broaches my mind? I am depressed, but I still don’t change which means I must like being this way, but that means I am happy being sad.

The mere thought of that makes my head spin because it doesn’t even make sense to me, but maybe I am just playing in to what people say about me. I like being sad. I enjoy my misery. I like being melancholy, like now for instance…

                I could be in a decompression chamber with oxygen slowing being sucked away second by second with no visible light and no way out like I had been welded into some iron lung, and it would feel the same as it feels in this gymnasium.  Hot and sweaty and cramped and no way out, only there is a lack of darkness or uncontrollable human panic. I don’t mind it one bit because I enjoy being miserable if it means others are in it with me too.

Misery loves company.

That sweltering heat of recycled carbon dioxide is practically dripping through the air, expanding my skin and melting my muscle until I fell loose like some amoeba or slip slide gelatinous material that looks like some strange sort of petroleum jelly.

                It is a strangely fascinating feeling.

                Despite the feeling of enjoyment at the collective sighs and annoyed moaning coming from the bleachers around me, I too felt the tedious boredom settling in me in a painfully uncomfortable way. It was like I swallowed a piece of jagged glass and topped it with a swig of Tabasco and it was just now making me fidget and flip my legs stretching them out to try to relieve this aching tedium. Boredom was always my biggest enemy. Now because I knew I would have to wait for a while now with it as my company.