There is a fine line between sanity and the darker confines of the mind, where you find yourself lost in a fog, so dense, the air you breathe is thicker than tar.
That’s how I felt when I woke up that morning. Stuck in a time that made no sense at all, yet everything around me was familiar. The setting is still the same. The way I looked was unchanged. But every cell in my body was different. I no longer resonated with who I was before it touched me. The person I had once been, now dead.
I remember how it reached deep inside my soul, tearing away all that made me who I was. It stole everything that made me good, that made me pure, that made me someone I was proud to be. Now a shadow, I saw the world as a place of perpetual torture. It was a prison, only this confinement was an eternal curse. One that had one exit, and that came with a price.
Of course, this hadn’t been my first encounter. This had happened many years before.
How?
I was sixteen. I had survived a summer stuck in solitude. The whispers of the summer breeze my only friend. I’d taken up running that year, more so just to get away from my family, but the problem with being alone so much, is the internal dialogue that takes over. Sure, it was easy to sit down and write my thoughts in a journal. But it was more private being able to talk to myself without anyone knowing what I was saying or thinking without the prying eyes of my sisters.
It became a ritual. Quite addictive. And yes, as humans, it is perfectly normal for all those inner monologues. It’s how we make decisions. It’s how we rationalize everything that happens to us. Right?
The night before my first day of college was unsettling. I couldn’t sleep. I was nervous. I feared that my path of being a social outcast would continue. So much fear consumed me, and unable to share this with anyone, I kept my head down and swallowed every last drop of dread.
That’s when I felt it in the room.
My bed was nestled over in the corner of the room, a window behind the headboard. In the far corner, a small closet.
I rested on my right side, staring at the door of the closet, knowing I could feel something different about the room.
My sister slept soundly in the other bed. Her light snoring was just about audible. I stared over at her, wondering if she stirred, feeling what I was feeling. She didn’t move.
I averted my gaze back to the closet. The door had opened the tiniest bit. My heart did that weird thing, like it was about to burst from my chest. Its beats thumping hard in my ears. My breaths were slow. I swallowed, holding the air in my lungs every few moments to listen. But there was no sound, just that sensation that I was being watched.
The skin on my arms stood on edge as I pulled the duvet up under my chin. My hands were numb from how tightly I clung to it.
Closing my eyes shut, I silently prayed, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, please don’t let it get me.”
On opening my eyes, I found myself lying on my bed, only this time, the bed was facing in the direction of the closet. Its door was wide open, and the darkness hovering inside.
“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” I muttered over and over.
But there was no denying I was wide awake.
It moved out from the closet. No face or form. Just a silhouette of darkness billowing above me. I wanted to scream, to call out for my daddy, but the words caught in my throat. They tried burrowing their way up, but with each intake of breath, the thing grew closer and closer.
It stopped right above my face.
The coldness was the first thing to hit me. Colder than any winter frost I’d ever experienced. Then the smell. It was something I could faintly recognize, but the memory was blurred.
I searched for the scream that so desperately wanted out. And again, my voice failed me.
It reached down with a barely visible arm and dug its tendrils deep inside my chest.
I froze. Locked in place. Unable to move. Unable to think. Unable to understand what was happening to me.
I just stared at it; pain, and terror all in one.
The echoes of the past pulsed through my head. I saw the unimaginable – the faces of those who’d passed on; the cries of babies; the fires of hell; the screams of the damned; the face of my abuser.
The tears streamed down my cheeks. My sobs were silent. The pain of darkness was greater than ever.
Why me? I thought.
But just as its fingers dug deeper, the bedroom door swung open, and the light came on.
“What’s all that noise?” my father said, evidently irritated.
My sister awoke, rubbing a hand against her eyes.
“I . . . I had a bad dream,” I replied, sitting up, and stared at the closet door, now closed.
“Take a drink of water,” my father said, “then back to sleep.”
That night I lay beside my sister, unable to sleep from fear, not once taking my eyes off the closet door. All the while feeling something settling within me. And I knew from that moment on, I’d never be the same again.
Just as it was then, the unease lived within me, only this time, when it came, it finished what it started all those years ago. It had taken whatever it had left behind. It had wanted me all along.
I had lived a life wearing a mask, all the while, my true self hid. Afraid if the world saw me, then I would be judged.
I stood, staring at my reflection and what did I see?
I saw the man who took my childhood.
I saw the internal scars come to the surface.
I saw the distortion in my eyes.
I saw the face of my lost youth.
And as the darkness descended, the exit sign lit up, guiding me to my salvation- my one escape. But could I really have left all that I loved behind? A lifetime of hiding my secret, all replaced by a decision made in a flash, all brought on by despair and shame.
Was it a test?
Had I been tainted?
Was there a lesson in there somewhere?
If there was a God, I no longer believed. He had evaded me at every corner, allowing me to wither. That’s how I saw myself as the depression consumed me. It ate away, cell by cell, destroying my mind, feeding on my grief, and in its wake, was a wreck.
I’d become my own undoing.