shards on the tile, shards of my mind

is the glass half empty, or is it half full? because i find my glass has shattered on the tile, and i can see myself reflected in every tiny piece. here lies my eye, here my lip. here an ear and there an arm. no piece reflecting all, but each taking some small portion and throwing it back disconnected from the whole. do i mend it? or do i discard it? is it even worth thinking about, or should i just walk away and leave the shards lying where they fell, reflecting pieces of what they see? if i step forward or if i step back, my blood smears the tiles as the broken glass mercilessly jabs my feet; but if i stand unmoving, my reflection mocks me without remorse, all the tiny pieces jumbled together into a crude representation, not truly myself.

outside i see the trees. all the leaves are gone, vanished into some cruel fancy of the wind, or clustered on the ground in pathetic heaps. the sky hints of snow. the air is icy, and i shiver at the thought of going out.

if i had my way, i would isolate myself from everything and everyone, to go hide in some dark secluded hole, where no-one can find me. i would have no reminders of things left undone, of words left unsaid, of changes left unmade. i would see no shadows of things i could have done, should have done, ought to have done differently. and for once the snide and ruthless audience that resides in my head, and lives to tell me what i did wrong, will have silence instead of critiques. oh, to hear a void in my mind, rather than the opera-house full of mockery and ridicule, that would be glorious indeed.

my eyes sting with half-conceived tears, and a dull ache has settled in my heart. my emotions have tied themselves in a knot in the middle of my chest and will not come undone, no matter how or which way i tug, and the end will not show itself.

so is the glass half empty? or is it half full? or perhaps it is shattered.

A riddle.

One if the riddles of my existence is the fact that I judge other people based on my own judgments of myself.

Sometimes when I'm with a friend, and I'm having fun, I would be perfectly happy to hang out with them all day. But when I think about how they are feeling, I assume that they are totally sick of being around me, that they want me to leave them alone, and that I am being a total nuisance.

I then spiral into a black and self-hating hole, where I assume that since my friend, as I assumed, doesn't want me around, then I am a horrible person, and therefore the world hates me and therefore I should also hate me, and if the world hates me, then my friend does too, and therefore I am an even worse person for inflicting myself on them, so then I hate myself even more.

And this happens even when I know the person really well.

I try not to let myself go into that sad little spiral, but sometimes, no matter how careful I am, I still slip up and fall in.

It's not fun.