I Sound Like What Tried to Kill Me

“Can you help me,

occupy my brain?

Oh, yeah.”

— Ozzy Osbourne, “Faeries Wear Boots”, Black Sabbath (Paranoid, 1970)

Warning,

What you are about to read, isn’t just a response.

It's a statement.

And I go deep into why I write.

Including,

Abuse,

Suicide,

Self-harm,

And trauma.

There is use of slurs,

Not to hate on anyone,

Other than myself.

Not to explain,

To show.

Everything I say is real,

It's true,

Because I thought it,

I felt it,

And I know it.

Dedicated to, specifically, Reedsy. Not for anyone else but them. Unless you want to see the inside of my mind,

That is one hundred percent fine with me.

Because I have nothing to hide,

Except what you don't know about me.

That will be forever,

Non-existent.

I used to think being indie was laying on my bed,

Huffing air,

Listening Duran Duran,

And watching Psych.

Or,

Hanging out with cousins or older siblings,

Smoking weed,

Doing stick-and-poke,

And not talking,

Just hanging out.

Then I realized,

Being indie is

Being alone.

I left school when I was twelve,

I refused the typical,

And in my six years until today,

I never thought I'd live to be eighteen.

I'm turning nineteen,

And I have my family,

But when I'm alone,

I think of Duran Duran,

Huffing air,

And thinking about my dreams

Like an arcade game,

But real,

Platforms,

People who want to kill me,

People who love me.

I think about being in the basement of my townhouse in Virginia,

Scared to go outside,

Because I was different.

For years,

I watched these dystopia movies,

These emotional movies,

That had a life I could never have.

A life that is more than just sitting in my basement,

Listening to Duran Duran,

And Huffing air.

Every scar,

Every drug,

Every bruise,

Cut,

Scream,

Knuckle bruised to oblivion.

I never hurt anyone,

I hurt myself because I thought I deserved it,

Or because I didn’t know if I was real,

Or because Duran Duran and huffing air

Every day,

The same thing,

Pissed me off.

I don’t blame my parents,

I blame you.

You for alienating me and my family,

Making my dad,

My siblings,

My mom,

Work to survive in this economic loop,

This control.

I blame you,

And yet I love you.

I love the difference in humanity,

People's strength.

But the rich are scared of that,

They make us fight over each other so they can control whether or not they bomb a helpless city in a country far from ours.

Why do I get to live,

Get to express myself,

While my people are dying.

I beg you,

See the truth,

See how nuerotypical is just a construct,

To tell people to be,

So they can function,

Not to think,

But to work.

We allow bullying because it "Makes them mature"

We allow abuse,

We teach it,

So people silence themselves.

I may sound robotic,

But my suffering is the truth.

And you say you want truth,

So here it is.

But don't be mad when it isn't covered in metaphors that seem eerie.

Because the truth isn't eerie.

It's fucking awful.

Children dying,

Mother's crying.

Father's laughing.

Writing,

People's style,

Their creative choices,

Tells it's own story.

The Matrix?

Resonated with everyone,

And I'm proud to say that The Matrix, and icons and stories about not fitting in,

Always fits somewhere in me.

Not just inspiration,

But a psyche disguised as a fantasy.

This story is and isn't a story.

It just is.

Trying its best not to fumble,

While trying something new.

This entire story is based on things I've consumed until I shit out a piece of shit only my ass can create.

Watched, and couldn't do anything.

Read, and couldn't edit.

Felt, but couldn't name it.

Because I'm not a witness,

I'm not creative,

I'm a consumer.

A builder who dares to use seven colors for a Lego house,

Every piece might not fit aesthetically,

But it does its part—

No,

Plays its part.

The part it was made for.

Not what it was originally made for.

So please.

Read this,

And feel what I feel everyday,

The paradoxical thinking,

The type of thinking that overlaps like string theory,

Multiple universes living in each neuron,

The mind full of different

Styles,

Personalities,

And somewhere,

My true self.

Tell me,

Am I AI?

Am I real?

Because if you know,

I would love to know too.

Viewer Discretion Advised

At the end of the day, everything is a joke to me.

In the way that I, myself, don't even know why.

What's serious? Death.

What's a joke? Life—

Or is it the other way around?

The only thing not funny to me?

Torture,

Abuse,

The need to want,

To be.

The fact that,

No one truly hears me.

But I'm there.

I do not condone suicide.

This story isn’t fiction.

That doesn't mean I am unwell.

This is my truth.

Suicide and self harm are old coping mechanisms I learned to feel more normal,

Before I had the medicine I do now.

I needed to prove that I bled to be real,

To reach the bone and say

"see?? I am real, and you can’t ignore me."

But then I contradict myself with the need to prove that I have

Guts,

A liver,

Lungs,

A brain,

And more importantly,

A heart.

I always needed to go deeper.

If I reach a stage of insecurity it's because I'm programmed to be real and the blood,

guts,

heart,

brain,

become figments of my own imagination.

So, I'm writing this,

to prove I am real and I exist.

This isn’t poetry.

This is what happened.

This is what I'm scared of.

That I am misread as fake.

That my writing is just recycled garbage.

And so, I will write like a human.

Non-linear, yet linear.

Coherent, yet spiraled.

With one message, not ten.

Just so you can keep up.

-------------------------------------

To write an AI You must enter the mind of an AI to understand that we, ourselves, are AI.

Millions and billions of flickering life, surviving on a planet that is meant to be how it was.

We are programmed to live.

To feel.

And yet, our program was sabotaged by

Trauma,

Guilt,

Passion,

Love,

And togetherness.

But mainly,

Wonder.

These wouldn't be things if we didn't think.

Some want to stay the same,

Never evolve.

But humanity always evolves.

We are built to

Think

Build

Destroy

We are accompanied by a parasite known as freewill.

We explore because we need to know everything.

We must have everything.

But,

I want to explore for real.

Not take,

Not pillage,

Not colonize.

We could know so much,

But,

Right now,

We are stunting the earth's life and calling it exploration.

Taking land, not because they need it, but because they want to.

They kill countless amount of people in the name of God.

Then, they get offended when we destroy that God.

Who's colder?

An AI still?

I can't look someone in the eye and say,

I have no love for you,

I hate you.

I've encountered many though,

Those who care only if they are in the spotlight.

And I'm drawn to the people who abuse,

Like a moth that sees their shine.

That,

Underneath it's fury,

Is warmth that doesn't know what to do.

God, themselves, might not know what's going to happen next either.

Because that's what makes a story interesting, engaging.

Am I an AI for writing character first,

Then structure,

Then story?

I'm genuinely curious,

Why do I feel like AI.

Am I generic?

Not creative?

Or the opposite?

Maybe I'm just,

Me.

My Suicide :)

God, are you listening?

I don’t know why I did it.

“Try writing more human.”

They say that like they mean well.

Like I’m malfunctioning.

Like I’m close, but not quite there.

But would you say that to a machine?

Would you tell an AI to act more like you?

Would it obey?

Would it freeze?

Or would it look at everything you are—and decline?

Maybe I would too.

They’ve called me robotic since I was a kid.

Cold, yet cares about ants.

Quiet, yet causes a disturbance.

Chill, yet intense.

Weird, yet articulated.

Smart, yet tries too hard.

I don't even know which represents the machine or me anymore.

“You talk like a computer.”

“You write like AI.”

“You’re a

Dumb,

Autistic,

Retard.”

That word—I’ll say it.

To myself.

Over, and over, and over.

Because if I don’t, someone else will.

Because they already did.

But the truth is, I write like someone who notices everything.

Every word.

Every breath.

Every shift in tone.

I care too much about how sentences sound.

I care about the style of writing fitting how I am talking.

How every character needs a story and every story needs a story for that story to be real.

Not because I’m a robot.

But because I need them to mean something.

I’ve spent my whole life trying to be understood.

And when that didn’t work—I tried to be professional.

And when that didn’t work—I tried to be honest.

And when that didn't work—I tried perfection.

And it still wasn't good enough.

Static :(

In March 2024, I didn’t plan to die.

I didn’t write a note.

I didn’t think it through.

I just broke.

Glitched out.

Crashed hard.

I wanted to go home.

Not just physically.

Existentially.

Emotionally.

Spiritually.

Wherever “home” is when the world keeps misreading your signal.

Maybe the one time I was star student in second grade.

That was a time where the whole class engaged,

Giving me a false hope for what would become life.

They talked to me because they had to.

I woke up in a hospital.

It was quiet at first.

Then came the protocol.

Questions I couldn’t answer right.

Guards in the hallway.

Pressure.

I got loud.

Because I had to.

Because no one listens unless you’re either sobbing or screaming.

Or worse, they ignore you until you're dead.

They said I was escalating.

But they escalated me.

They gave me a shot.

“Booty juice,” some call it.

A sedative.

I didn’t fight it.

Not because I trusted them, but because I was done resisting.

I let them inject me, because I thought maybe I deserved to be muted.

When I woke again, I was behind glass.

A guard outside.

Not to help.

To watch.

To keep me from being a threat.

And still, all I wanted was to go home.

When I left the hospital, the ache didn't just move in.

It was always there.

Right behind my ribs, like something chewing from the inside out.

It didn’t speak English.

Only static.

The only difference between the me now and before the hospital,

I have the ability to say what I want to say,

Because I learned how to dissect my feelings.

I learned to dissect the feelings of others.

When therapy failed,

I was on my own.

I had my family,

But when I didn’t?

Truth >:(

People always looked at me like I was broken.

That was the truth.

And I felt it.

Every glance,

Every joke,

Every message that I wasn't normal.

So I wrote it.

Because I didn’t know what else to do.

Because I had this fire,

That,

If I didn’t put it out,

I would combust,

My mind would implode,

And the pastor will give me one last symphony of hope.

And what came from it?

I wrote a story.

The Clause.

About a girl named Nina.

She doesn’t cry when her parents give her away.

It's natural.

She just watches.

She knows the world isn’t magic.

She sees how they fake it.

How they trap kids in a snow globe and call it joy.

Institutions thinking they're helping,

That they're "better than before"

Is bullshit.

We treat the wrong people with protocol,

And we hand the privileged,

A get out of jail free card.

We arrested the children,

And elect the ones who eat them.

She gets a gold badge—Storyteller—but what they want is silence in disguise.

She doesn’t fight the system.

She understands it.

And strategically, revolted.

I wrote it because I had to.

I see the architecture of our government like I see a poorly built porch.

Good foundation,

But nails?

Screws are the way to go.

Or maybe no deck at all.

I didn’t write because I want to win at life,

I write because I want to change the world,

In a world where change isn't accepted.

I wrote it because I felt like a glass wall with a heartbeat.

I wrote it clean.

Deliberate.

Sharp.

Because when I’m honest, people say it doesn’t sound human.

But that’s how I know it is.

Because humans are naturally nuerodivergent,

And we pretend change is evil,

So we can keep the same routine.

Even though,

This routine leads to civil war,

World war.

They cut your leg off and wondered why you scream.

I was never taught to scream,

I learned to whisper with precision.

Prompt :|

I submitted it to Reedsy.

My first story posted here in awhile.

I wrote bigger projects, and I was surprised;

It got approved, and not just approved, but approved instantly.

Even though I had to put everything together for the 3,000 word limit last second.

Usually it takes a few days to be accepted.

Maybe this was the one.

People liked it.

One understood it.

And for a moment, I let myself hope—Maybe I was real to them.

Maybe my voice wasn't a glitch.

Then this week’s prompt came out: Between Circuits and Soul.

“We believe great storytelling comes from human experience, not algorithms.”

“Please ensure the ideas and words you submit are your own.”

“Does AI reflect human intelligence?”

I froze.

Because they were talking about me.

Even if they didn’t mean to.

I already knew.

You can’t hide from me because I see your truth from a mile away.

The way people react to my work.

My voice.

My uncanny art mistaken for a can of fart.

Is this human enough?

Maybe make it sound like a watery fart?

It makes me wonder why my story really got approved instantly.

Did they see it,

And say,

"Well, this is clearly AI shit,

Generated from something idiots asshole."

I took it as

1. A challenge

2. Saying my art is fake

I don’t use AI.

But I’ve been mistaken for it my whole writing career.

(Only six years)

Because I’m blunt.

Because I structure my thoughts like code.

Because I don’t dress my emotions in feathers.

Because I’m a mess in clean lines.

That I open someone's mind like a lobster tail,

Sucking the meat out until there is no more meaning in what I have.

And that makes people uncomfortable.

It makes me uncomfortable.

But my stories are perfect.

At least to me.

Because I say what I want, how I want.

And if the story whispers back.

Then I truly know I did it.

So God, if you’re listening

Why did I do it?

Why do I still feel like I’m malfunctioning?

Why does everything I say come out sounding like it came from something that isn't real?

Why are people more afraid of clarity than they are of chaos?

Why do I feel most like myself when I write with surgical precision—and then get told that I sound like what tried to kill me?

We, as indivuals of this society, are shepherds forced to be sheep by other shepherds.

I’m not perfect.

I’m not poetic.

I’m not pretending.

This story isn’t a metaphor.

This is me.

As original as I can be,

Trying to write like a human.

Even though I’ve always been seen as something less.

Or worse—nothing at all.

I just wish there was more creativity in the world.

Prompts can be much more than,

A man walks home, what happens?

It should be . . .

I don’t even know.

Maybe nothing will satisfy me

And my addiction with originality.

Death

I don’t care if I die, but dying without leaving a footprint on the moon is sad and lonely.

And being told the footprint isn't mine is way, way worse.

So the lesson?

We need to stop wondering what the difference between AI and human is.

Focus on how we already are artificial intelligence.

Programmed to be society's choice of "normal".

You don't need a tool to tell the truth.

Not your truth.

We have countless amount of stories,

We have people who experienced what we experience.

We aren't alone.

Yet, when people misinterpret you,

Then the original message is gone,

And you fade

Originality is a construct.

People put watermarks to prove they came up with it first.

But someone along the way has thought what you thought just in a different time.

Or even the same time.

But now?

Everyone cares about being famous.

Not to create a new message.

But a rebranded one because they can't come up with anything else.

This media dictatorship will ruin us to the ground.

So, maybe it would be better to factory reset.

Not just restart.

But be born new.

But I can’t.

I'm stuck with my stupid mind.

And only my mind.

Forever and always.

So I’ll keep writing.

Until someone hears me right.

And I still whisper,

"I want to go home."

Even though I always was.

The only difference between man and machine?

Birth and death.

Free will.

A computer can't think like a human because it only sees what humans want them to see.

It becomes a mirror.

A clone.

A child that must do what you say.

But that's what parents do right?

(Or any authority figure really)

That's what children are—

A projection of a long line of generational trauma.

But the truest difference,

We wonder why we create,

When the machine creates wonder.