Others Are My Hell

"For I am an Other"

He asked my burden — was it sin or pain?
Poverty? A clouded brain?
I said: All of the above — and then some still.
My soul is bruised beyond my will.

What could help — forgiveness? healing?
Earthly wealth? Mystic feeling?

None break the spell — the cage holds well.
Hell is mine. Others lit the flame.
I am an Other. I forged my Hell.
I am the problem. I carry the blame.

Not just the sinner — I built the shell.
They struck first. I struck as well.
They sparked the fire — I let it swell.

He asks one word: sin, pain, or lack.
But souls don’t break on clean-cut tracks.
I am splintered — wounds without name.
I am the problem. I carry the shame.

Their eyes defined me,
Their words shaped mine.
Their needs taught mine
To twist, to lie.
What once was hunger turned to greed —
Desire — sinful in seed, masked misdeed.

Corruption — theirs, and my own.
For I am an Other who sins to belong.
Defined from without, trapped within,
Marked by wounds no one has seen.
Bleeding for those who won’t bleed for me —
Expecting— chasing— endlessly
With a will that reigns, but wears no crown:
Adrift in sin, yet still unbound.

I break myself with quiet hands.
I am the hunger that never ends.

I am Héautontimorouménos1 —
The self tortured, the self morose.
My soul: both cut and blade,
The wound, the dagger,
The self betrayed.

How am I to be alone with God,
When Others twist me like a fraud?
When still they stand between us both,
To bend, to shape, to claim my oath?

Salvation, in a world of Others,
Is just a softer kind of Hell.
They locked my soul inside a shell —
And locked themselves in it as well.

How to forgive what can't feel His grace?
Healing resets, new wounds take their place
God makes me rich, gold streets lead to Hell
God enlightens me, still I'm trapped in their spell

I asked for solitude,
To leave their turpitude.
But even alone, I’m not yet free —
For Others move and speak through me.

Architects of my damnation,
Audience to my collapse,
They haunt each invocation,
And twist the truth in silent traps.

Haunted my prayers,
Corrupted my thought,
Left me kneeling, faith distraught.

A thousand echoes — none my own.
My soul stammers, stripped and prone.
Cut from God, down to the bone.

Free this soul from borrowed blame,
From second voices, second names.
Exorcise the foreign flame.
Let what is mine at last remain.

Not redemption — liberation:
A will unbroken by stagnation.
A single flame I call my own,
For God alone — not to belong.

Forgive my soul. Forget them all.
I ask for freedom. True — and final.

Footnotes
1  Reference to Baudelaire's poem "Héautontimorouménos" -- a Greek term meaning “self-tormentor” or “one who punishes oneself.”