What is the darkness?
Imagine that there is a voice in your head. It's a part of your brain that has detached itself from the rest of the grey matter that lies under your control. It has achieved independence. It has no master, it has no strings that you can pull, and it sits in the center of your mind where it can reach every part of your being with ease.
And it wants to hurt you.
It is the ultimate enemy because it knows your every weakness and it exploits them. It can manipulate your emotions, your very thoughts, without even trying. You can't stop it. It can reach into your head and pluck the strings of despair and agony and shame and make you dance to them. If you don't resist, it makes you dance faster and faster, spinning and spinning until you don't know which way is up or down, what is right or wrong, what is real life and what is Hell.
If you resist, it punishes you for your arrogance. It exhausts you to the breaking point. The harder you push back, the harder it bites. It digs deeper, it's claws draw more blood, it pulls out more horror for you to endure, waiting until it either finds the chink in your armor or exhausts the last of your defenses.
You will experience shame. You will be ashamed of everything you have ever failed at. You will be ashamed at everything you've ever gotten wrong. Every poor school grade, every rejection from the object of your affection, every word spoken against your character you will know to be absolutely deserved because of how worthless you. And you are worthless. Because the darkness can make you feel, with absolute certainty, how worthless you are.
You will experience rage. Your anger will push you until your blood is pounding in your ears and your teeth hurt from grinding against each other and your hands want to do nothing but smash anything and everything in arms length. This fury comes from the fact that you have failed, that you will always fail, and that the only person responsible for it is you. You may find yourself directing your anger at others but ultimately you'll smash the mirror because you hate yourself because you know your rage is justified. because the darkness can make you feel, with absolute certainty, how worthless you are.
You will experience apathy. Days will come when you don't want to get out of bed because there's no point. You'll never amount to anything, you aren't worth anything and you shouldn't even try to achieve your dreams because you'll just fail after trying so hard. So you stay home, you ignore calls from friends and family, you stop caring about even the most basic things in your life that you don't have to focus on in order to survive. After all, you know there's no point. Because the darkness can make you feel, with absolute certainty, how worthless you are.
You will experience fear. No matter how much you hurt, no one actually cares about your problems. Other people have real problems not fake problems like you and your emo depressiveness. You're not dying. You're not starving. So get over yourself. And don't tell anyone what your problem is because it doesn't matter. If you tell them, they'll just laugh at you or tell you to get over yourself or stop begging for attention or to get laid and get over it or that you just try to be happy and you'll be happy. So when people ask how you're doing you just say you're fine, because they don't want to hear about your problems. Because the darkness can make you feel, with absolutely certainty, how worthless you are.
You suffer every day. You suffer because the darkness wants you to suffer. It sits on your shoulder like the imp, whispering in your ear all the truths you already know and hate to hear. It is the black dog, nipping at your heels, threatening to devour you if you don't keep to the script and continue pretending everything is fine. it is the cancer, the black ichor that devours you piece by piece on the inside, until the only thing left inside of you is agony and grief and despair.
The darkness won't stop. It won't stop until you end it. And in that moment, where the pain of living outweighs the pain you'll inflict on your loved ones by taking your own life, you'll pull that trigger, take that jump, make that final cut and the darkness will laugh because it has won.
Because it always wins.
