Closet doors and a Golden Mist

Sometimes I sit on my bedroom floor, trying to shut out the voices in my head. I sit in dreadful anticipation, I feel myself slipping away.. grasping for a sliver of hope, a strand of.. anything at all, that’ll stop the incoherent screaming. Help..the closet doors are banging against their hinges, the dark shapes...the demons, they’re stronger now...I see little puffs of dust and bits of wood fly out after every blow.. I wish I could get up and stop them or at let go of my thread of life but I feel I’ve been nailed to the floor....every breath I take gives me a stabbing pain, every time I try blink, it burns, simply existing hurts.

Where ever I go, there’s always an internal battle. My hand itching to reach that knife, my mouth begging me to open up that bottle of pills in my bathroom shelf.., my legs, swaying to jump in front of that big yellow bus on the street. Why?...Just to end it all..the haunting pain, from scars on my soul, the shards of broken dreams and promises. The ghost of who I was. That was a long time ago, when I was fearless enough to roam  about the cobwebbed streets in a foreign country with strangers, to smell the flowers and grass of the meadows, to get drenched in the summer showers below the mango trees, and inhale the petrichor that followed, to jump into emerald green lakes, to fly even when I didn’t know how to. To run...for the fun of it...not away from my problems..I was fearless, I felt alive, I was alive, a few days ago...but I’ve relapsed into this mess in my head

Now I’m simply floating, existing and breathing... but not inhaling the scents of life, not picturing the beauty of all the little things before me, everything seems like a multi-colored blur or a black and white slo-mo. I’m not dead, I’m barely alive

The doors finally crack and crumble like a sandcastle hit by a strong wave, and the voices of the dark shapes flood me, I try to scamper away, scratch the floor, writhe and flail, I’m reminded of all the reasons why it’d be better if I left this place, how beautiful the other side is, why I’ll never be good enough... how I’m better off dead..and won’t be missed by anyone at all..how a lot of people, sometimes the ones you call your own, are awful and hurtful...and you feel like trash..wanting to get incinerated...

But I’m held down to the floor by something else that came in through those doors, strong yet gentle, radiating a soft glow, that I can’t see through the tears of frustration and pain. It’s always been there..it’s the only thing that saves me...gives me the sliver of hope that I keep looking for...but ,I’ve only seen flashes of it, and felt it... when my mum brings me apples cut into neat cubes in my room, when my dad ruffles my hair, and calls me princess, when my sisters hug me and can’t wait to tell me about their day, the way my friends’ faces light up when I meet them, the excitement in my best friends’ voices when I call them up. The laughs and memories associated to a freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. The smell of my favorite perfume, my best friend’s hoodie, the sleepless nights and midnight talks. It keeps me grounded 

Finally, the raging storm of the grisly voices passes, it stays... leaving me a bit more hopeful than I was, but utterly broken. Maybe one day, I won’t be blindfolded by the demons in head anymore. Maybe one day, I will be stronger than them.... and rise above it all, just to fall back here, again.