Sometimes I can’t handle these nightmares. They torment me day and night, all hours of every day. It’s like I’m stuck inside of a clock. I’m moving with time, but I don’t even know what day it is. Imagine confusion so deep it tears you apart and mentally, you can’t handle any more depersonalization. Your nightmare of going crazy becomes your only reality, but who knows what’s real anyways? Your senses are so strong, yet dull; a foggy memory, an altered conscious, and your silent yet desperate cry for help. Imagine fighting for a life you don’t even have, to be something you never can be. You’re reaching for the sky from the top of a mountain, so close; your fingertips can barely graze the stratosphere, until suddenly a storm crashes your mountain into a deep abyss. All you see is black, and you finally settle into the darkness and gently embrace it.

I remember that little girl that used to stare back at me in the mirror. She had a sparkle, a flicker, a slight hint of innocence in her smile. In those blue eyes were days of pain, not years. Now the woman that consumes my reflection is sick, and she disgusts me. The very thought of her pain shatters the mirror as it flies off the wall and shards catch her skin. The blood she saw once running down her arm, as a child, is forever bore into her memory. She still feels the rush of her fist meeting the mirror’s hard surface. The cracked reflection shows the pain she hides, it reveals her demons. In her shadows lurk the drops of blood from each wound on her body. The demons surround her; they chant in her ears, they dance to the sounds of death, screaming, and the sounds of little girls crying in the dark.

But behind the mirror isn’t empty, it is a portal to her conscious. Slowly each drop of blood takes her to a different world. Her darkness no longer a mystery, she grasps onto every ounce of emotion she can find. Surges running through her body, then, relaxation. It’s a relief to finally feel something real.

Her mind slips into her own world. She’s running through an empty store. Everything is white. She is trying to find anything that can help her, but all the shelves are empty. In panic, pushing over the shelves, she destroys the only hope she had to sanity. But what hope is there? Only the false hope that awaits her on this side of her conscious.

And her false hope is what gives her sane hope- the kind of hope that you find in an elderly lady, with wisdom exceeding that of any pastor, professor or genius. Yet such a fragile mirror is her hope, that it could be shattered by the slightest glimpse at pain. Then slowly, she breaks, her spirit crushes like a thousand racehorses pouncing her time and time again. She desperately pleas to be free- it’s tiresome, constantly being a slave to darkness. And the more she fights, the more she is pounced. She can’t escape. There are too many demons, and she’s the only one fighting. She’s surrounded, she surrenders. Understanding her sinister nature, she reluctantly accepts the demons and allows them in. She’s given up hope.

Imagine fighting for a life you don’t even have, to be something you never can be.

It’s like drowning in the middle of the ocean, while everyone else is on boats screaming at you “learn to swim!”. It’s the same as being thrown to wolves to learn how to fight. It’s a hopeless battle; evil always has the unfair advantage. Her mind has the unfair advantage. So, tonight, she’ll travel again to her own world, and there she’ll embrace the darkness. She’ll allow herself to drown, to be mauled by wolves, because she simply doesn’t care anymore. When darkness wins, there’s no more breath, there’s no more senses, there’s no more hope. She’ll slip into an evil reality written by her own conscious, her life played out as simple acts, not impulse by emotion. Giving up the reins, darkness is now in control.

Darkness is always in control.