A Spot

*In one of my writing classes, my professor made us imagine that we had a spot somewhere in our chests. She asked us to explain not just the spot, but what surrounds in, in a page long project. Some did some metaphysical things, but it was meant to be personal and this was as personal as I could seem to make it. So yeah.

   I don't have just a spot anymore, I have a gaping hole. There is a gaping hold without an exit wound. There is a gaping hole without an entrance wound.

   They've tried to stitch it up. Many have tried. Many have failed. Some have come along with their needle and thread and just as soon as the hole starts to close, they make another tear. The hole comes back, only wider than before. Frayed.

   It's festering. The hole is festering, making itself wider and wider with each passing day. At first it was small, so small a doctor could not see it with an x-ray when I first complained.

   There is no visible wound, but there is a festering hole growing larger the more perfectionist "practitioners" attempt to fix it.

   They say I'm angry because I am Irish. Because I have red hair. Because I am short. But really it's the pain of a hole growing so large I feel as if I might implode that makes me angry. A hole no one sees. No one believes. No one else has. And it makes me bitter. I am alone with a hole and it makes me bitter. It is the lack of feeling that I feel the most.

   I don't complain anymore. It keeps them away so they do not try to fix my hole with needle and thread, but only tear at it instead. I don't complain and I pretend it does not exist. They believe me. If you cannot see the wound then the hole must not exist. My chest compromises of smooth, soft skin, of lungs, of a sternum, of a pulsating red mass. And a hole that does not exist.

  Is it natural?

  Does everyone cover their hole with skin and deny it's existence to the world?

  Does everyone feel this way, is if about to implode form a self-torn disease?

  Or is it just me?

  Destined to live alone, bitter, and denying the very existence of my core self?