The Shadows within

Depression overcomes a woman who cannot face her own demons and strive for happiness.

You can sink without water. You can drown in the air. You can be ripped to shreds without having a single mark left on your body. It is so easy to fall deep into an abyss and have no hope of climbing out. Pain can radiate through you without a source or cause. When you need help when you desperately need help is when you cannot bring yourself to reach out. You can be beaten down, outcasted, shoved away, and bullied by your own hand. Every day the whispers tell you things you cannot bear to hear. "You are nothing, you are worthless, no one loves you, why would they? You are trash." Every day those whispers in your ear make you sink lower and lower. "Don't believe them, you are perfect as you are." Kind words cannot be trusted because you know better than anyone else that you are nothing. You can lay there, cry, shiver, and ache. You can scream and pound your fists against the ground and it will never help. Climbing out of the abyss is too hard, it hurts to move, to breathe, to exist. All you can think about is how much better off everyone else will be if you were gone. If you just disappeared everyone will be happier, will have less a burden crushing them, ruining them, turning their lives into daily pain. Then you see it before you. The darkness that has overcome you, the sole reason for your pain, for your torment. You can try to fight it, you can try to claw your way out, but it keeps stopping you Over and over again it stops you. Over and over again it drags you back down. "Why leave? no one up there wants you. No one loves you. You do not matter." it sneers in disgust. It rips you apart, but you know it is true. You cannot argue against it, you cannot disagree with it, You can lay down and wait to die, to rot because trying is painful. It sucks you out, takes everything good away from you and only leaves you with this consuming pain. You can feel it in your breath, in every beat of your heart, it will always be there to tear you down. Sometimes the shadow stays quiet but lets its presence be known. Other times it screams in your head every painful thing from your past. Every part of you that you hate, that you wanted to change, It kills you slowly with words, with the agony it brings you. It kills you with starvation, dehydration. It kills you by not letting you get up, by taking away any positive thought you conjure. You can't escape the shadow. It's impossible because it is you. You need to fight, you need to try harder than anyone else to be okay. It isn't fair, but it isn't impossible and yet you feel hopeless.  It drags you, pulls you by your arms and legs, throws you over a burning pit. You can scream, you can cry, but the fire will not let up. You have to try, you have to fight. You have to become what you are scared of being. You have to believe in yourself and others, but the shadow keeps you at bay, it drags you, torments you, crushes you until there is nothing left. The shadow within you will never leave you alone. It can give you a vacation, but it will always come back. It will be stronger, harder, laughing at you for thinking you can be okay because you never will be. It controls you and you let it.