Embracing the Darkness

Anger clung to her skin its talons ripping away peeling back the flesh to expose the darkness that lies beneath. Not bone, not blood just rippling currents of black nothingness. Her eyes shifting from shining hazel to dull to nothing but a blank stare. She stopped fighting the emotions that clung to her, spreading inside her, venom dripped from her mouth when she spoke. Shooting daggers at those closest to her. Pushing them away. All the tender voices of those who knew part of the hell she had faced in those rooms, in those places, the hell that corrupted her but never the full truth, never the whole story they needn't know - the darkness that touched her, that invaded her, and each year lay dormant for a period of time before another pain sliced through her. It holds her gently like a mother holding its sleeping babe in its arms. It wraps her in the silky tendrils of darkness, in the stillness, her pain trapped and pushed back, anger and rage warming her in the belly of this beast. The venom kept those closest pushed back. Never close enough to see. The violent darkness that lives inside, the vengeful demon that holds her close to its chest, the only thing that never left her, the darkness never shied from her. It never left her even when everyone else had. The darkness sees her in all her wreckage and gently reminds her that around it she does not need to wear a mask.

It sees her and accepts her for all that she is and all that she is not. It calms the panic that rises by smothering the light in its peaceful darkness. It pours its soothing balm on the scars that no one can see. The darkness when it arrived was an unwelcome beast that burrowed in her deep calling her its home but year after year it became a part of her. The darkness saved her. Darkness is misunderstood and unwelcome. Most do not want to look into the mirror and see it dwelling within. It is feared. It calms the storms that rage war insider her, the battles and bloodshed that are conjured inside of her head, the death that had tried to claim her, the self-hatred and screams bound and trapped in her throat begging for their release - the darkness halts the voices that seductively whisper self-destruction in her ears wrapping its tendrils around their throats. The breath of the life of those lies exhaled from her lips on a heavy sigh.

The darkness reminds her that she has no need for fear. That she has seen pure evil and looked into its eyes and survived. It reminds her that she has walked through hell and bared the weight of loss, that she has scars seen and unseen, it reminds her that like a phoenix she has risen from the ashes - rebuilt and burned repeatedly. It lifts her head up when it hangs heavy, the darkness offers moments of reprieve, it slides her behind its protection. When her soul is too tired to pretend, too tired to hide the weight in her limbs, too tired to trick the world with a smile, the darkness slips on the mask and braves the world for her. The darkness swallows her grief when it threatens to destroy her. It returns it to her when she can manage the turbulent emotions that crash into her like waves of knives. It knows that although it may cut, it may sting, it will not make her bleed and she knows that the darkness with be there offering its silent comfort.