Arbitrarily Empty

I’m a happy person,
I often smile,
I appreciate the little things.
I reflect deeply,
I see the good in everything,
Each day is perfect,
Each night serene,
Every season valuable,
All time worth enjoying.
I find nothing to complain about,
I help people with their problems,
I give without taking,
I respect others,
I’m polite, caring, honest.
All the pieces,
In the pie chart,
That make up who I want to be,
Are made with all the beautiful things I could find.
But somehow,
When I look at the graph I use to chart my successes,
I find it empty.
When I look into the mirror,
I don’t see an accurate reflection of who I am,
Or what I do for people.
When I look into a mirror,
It’s like looking through a window,
Into a vast expanse,
Of limitless nothingness.
Some decision I made,
Long ago,
Has stuck with me in spite of my best intentions.
No matter what I do,
To make the world a better place,
And live a better life,
I still see myself as a carbon copy,
Of a carbon copy,
Of a blank page.
Often I confuse my arbitrary emptiness as self-loathing.
I give myself speeches about how worthless,
Awful,
And inhuman I am.
But then I remember,
Suddenly,
That none of that is true.
The next day I’ll go to the store,
Pick up hats,
Ribbons,
A cake,
I’ll get decorations,
And music,
And throw myself a pity party.
Wallowing in the idea that I have never been loved,
Then I’ll remind myself that, that just isn’t the case,
I’ll think back to all the people who cared.
Family,
Friends,
Lovers.
I pretend like they don’t love me,
Because some part of who I am,
Inspires himself by overcoming adversity.
Some brave hero,
Lingering in the depths of my inner-self,
Wants to fight through the nothingness,
To come out the other side,
With a maiden on one arm,
A sword in the other,
A white stallion beneath me,
And an army of unknown fears behind me having fallen to my blade.
That hero is a boy.
His fight is a fantasy.
His enemies are imaginary.
The man who stands here today has fought them all away,
He has found his maiden,
And found her to be less than he expected,
Again and again and again.
Leading him to casually toss away notions of normalcy,
In search of a great adventure,
That lay elsewhere,
Ever elsewhere.
It’s that nothingness…
That emptiness that draws me.
If I were fulfilled,
Comfortable,
Content,
Who knows what I wouldn’t do?
If all my dreams were realistic,
I wonder how they would limit me?
I see myself as nothing,
I view my accomplishments as empty,
Because I never want to stop defining myself with positive adjectives,
And the only way I know,
To successfully push past,
The walls of discouragement I built for myself,
As a shy, lonely, reclusive boy,
Is to be a hero on the outside,
Who hates himself on the inside.