My Scars are Deeper than Yours

2005-07-16, 9:11 p.m.

"The idea was to have a voice of your own, distinctive, sounding like nobody else's. The result is that everybody sounds alike." - David Lehman, The History of Modern Poetry
My pain. My pain is better than anyone else's. My pain is more serious than anyone else's. My pain is more important than anyone else's. Compared to my pain, your pain is petty, meaningless. Everyone else's pain is a day at the beach. A walk in the park. A piece of cake. It's my pain beating breasts, licking open sores. My pain crying thick red tears of arterial blood, twisting the knife blade around, and around, and around. My pain representative of all the injustice that ever happened, is happening, or will happen.

I blame my lovers, my mother. I blame organized religion, the curent administration. I blame the capatalist system of economics. But most importantly I blame everyone who has ever lived, because they have all been party to my torment. If not directly then indirectly. If you don't believe me, just give me a little time. I can find the blood on their hands.

Some say I need to get over it, transcend, put it all behind me and get on with my life; but what do they know? They've never experienced my pain. My pain is so truly, enormously unique. If I don't dwell on it, just who would? My pain allows me to be bitter and resentful towards those who have caused my suffering. Towards those who do not share my suffering. My pain releases me from the responsibility of having to do something with my life, because I can always blame my failure on my status as a member of a socially disenfranchised group of people. My pain makes me the most important person in any room. If you don't agree it's because you don't understand, and there's something terribly wrong with you.

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