Knives have been thrust into my chest, my stomach, my limbs, my back. I feel almost nothing, only pressure. I saw the handles buried beneath my skin, leaving a shadow of the outline in a bruise. My lower half is showered in warm, thick blood, and I almost want to relax into its comfort. Finally, I feel the delayed pain. Needles stab me over and over, and my breath is choked in my throat.  I feel my body pulsating and screaming, and inhaling only pushes on the walls of my skin, breaking them even more. My skin is shattered. My body loses its structure and no longer supports me. I truly see the limits of my body, the lack of impenetrability,  the thinness of my skin, and the impossibility of it keeping my blood and veins and organs intact until now. In its greatest moment of failure, of collapse, I can appreciate its efforts to keep me safe.

Sound is slowly drowned out, I am alone with myself in a glass case, seeing and yet unable to comprehend anything beyond it. It’s lonely, and anticlimactic, and peaceful. I expected dramatic, strained gasps, blood framing my head in a final halo. I feel the hollowness of myself when the pain finally stops. I’m relieved, though I know it’s a deceptive sense of security. I’m more gloriously alone than I’ve ever been. I’m separated from the rest by a veil of bloodiness and adrenaline and broken skin that they may never understand. I can’t hear anyone, and I can’t feel.

I can’t see.