The Darkest Place on Earth

There is a place, darker than any cavern or hole, any cell or starless night.

 There is a place darker and more painful than any perception of the wrong side of the afterlife-

where cries for help have long since died and “Hell” becomes a welcome paradise.

 

     In such darkness, in such pain, your thoughts become blurred, incoherent. Blind to

the love of those who still reach for you, love itself having been the hand

that cast you down- though you dearly want to trust it again. You forget the

beauty of the sun, the gifts of life and the earth, and of human interaction;

all having become sinister reminders of beauty loved and lost somewhere far

above the walls you’ve spent countless sleepless nights clawing your fingers

raw against until even your sense of direction becomes lost. The will to fight took

to the grave some time ago, weary of the fight and calling you to come and take

your rest as well.

 

     Though you may know that you are loved and needed, and return that love as best as you can,

 the pain, the loss that consumes you, the demons that haunt you

relentlessly through your waking hours and constant nightmares, eat at your

sanity until there is nothing but pain, anguish left. Even for the strongest of

wills, the torment becomes too much, the misery a constant devil on your

shoulder. Despite the best of efforts, the soul knows what it wants, the heart

knows for what it must bleed, and slow as a cancer, the will to fight the pain

with brave face withers and dies.

 

     You don’t want to stare at the sky above and at couples in love any longer. You don’t

want to wait and dream of better days long gone and never to return any longer.

You don’t want remorse, pain, and hatred riding passenger through each and

every spiteful hour any longer. And you don’t want to burden those who have not

forsaken you with your troubles, as if they don’t have their own to worry

about. So you lock yourself away in your own private hell, and hope they will

all understand as with shaking hands, you make your best effort to escape the

darkest place on earth the only way that seems real and permanent.

 

Only sometimes does a hand reach from the darkness at just the right time, and

remind you that it is not your time, and you are not alone, not the only one. Other

times, the pain only a few of the most passionate and proud of hearts can

understand, finally recedes- beating its last cries unheard from a place few

have ever been and climbed out again.

 

Thoughthe person themselves may never be alone, the soul knows what it knows. Sometimes,

just as often as it saves, it is hope that kills the best of us.