Monsters and Demons

They don’t tell you that the light at the end of the tunnel is a lie. Just a little bit farther.

You tell yourself that if you can just survive this, if you can just survive a little bit longer, you will be free of your monsters and your demons, the people that hurt you beyond recognition. You can do it.

But then you survive it and you escape them, only to find out that at the end of the tunnel is a vast ocean that you now have to try to not only stay afloat in, but find shore. Help!

Your already bruised and battered body is exhausted, your spirit is starting to falter. It hurts.

How are you supposed to stay afloat, how are you supposed to find shore? Because even though you physically left them behind, you escaped them, you realise that they have followed you through the tunnel, except now they live in your head. You will never be rid of us.

Every hand that is offered to you, those who help, their faces warp and distort until all you can see are the monsters, the demons. Slamming doors. Screaming. Barricades.

They follow you, relentlessly pushing the memories, the trauma, the pain through your mind over and over again, breaking your spirit even more. You hear their voices, telling you how worthless you are, and why are you still fighting? Don’t be a child.

And the pain doesn’t go away, because at least when it was happening you were numb, numb to survive it all, but now? Now you start to thaw, and the pain is overwhelming. An entire lifetime of pain is coming back, and how are you supposed to fight back? Stop being ridiculous.

And every time you take a breath or you get your head above the water, they come back and try to push you under, and you start to question why you’re fighting if they’re going to haunt you forever. Grabbing, throwing. Screaming.

You don’t want them to win, but then you remember that they won a long time ago, they killed you and that you died, and now you don’t know who you are, or how to live or survive, and even when you see land, even if you make it to land, there is always a cliff nearby, with roaring waters waiting for you to break, waiting for a gap in your tattered defences, to pull you back in, and bring you to the bottom of the sea. Idiot.

This new land is foreign, and you no longer remember how to live. Pathetic. Stupid. Things that once worked, no longer do. Useless. No one here has mercy for you and your broken shell of a mind, because they only care about the physical, and your superficial bruises have healed. Liar.

They cannot see the shreds of your soul, the demons that surround you, haunt you, follow you. You are scared of everything, and you no longer react how you used to. You no longer recognise yourself, and you start to think you’re crazy. Attention seeker.

And that sea bottom is starting to look like a comfortable bed, because you are beyond exhausted, and you are so tired of fighting, and you just want to rest. But if you rest, you drown. But oh, how wonderful it is, the thought of rest, the thought of sleep. I am so tired.

You keep fighting, but it is a half-hearted attempt, for the few that you still love, that you still care about, but you now feel trapped, and hopeless, and you can no longer see a future for yourself. You promise to keep on fighting, but you are terrified that one day, those demons will push you over that cliff once more, and you will have to break that promise.

I don’t know how to survive in this world.