Siren's Call

The sadness tastes sweet on my tongue. It enraptures my soul and drags me down with it. Like a soft symphony, it takes me to places I never thought possible. Like a siren, it lures me into the deep and threatens to chew my flesh and nash my bones. If I give in, it will swallow me whole. Undoing the work that has been laid before me. Yet if I fight, it will be a battle unending.

Do I fight? The ones who care screams assent into the skies, deafening in their volume. But the sadness lingers long past the echoes of their cries, it whispers and schemes and plots my demise. It curls into every thought, like a cancer, a tumor, a leech. It feeds off the life force that sustains me, cutting down the days, weeks, and years left to me.

The siren sings to me. Her sweet lullabye caressing my soul. She sings to me of the dark, of the void, of the emptiness that surrounds us. She sings to me of the ways I can end it. She sings of sweet release, momentary pain. She sings of how she wants to rip into my flesh and suck the marrow from my bones.

She sings and I weep. I weep because I know. I know because I have seen.

I have seen what she wants from me. I have seen the destruction and the turmoil that she leaves in her wake. I have seen the lives that she has destroyed. I have seen how she sinks her claws into new victims after every meal.

And I weep. I weep for those who were not strong enough to fight her. I weep for those who are only just meeting her. I weep for those who are like me and waiting for the day when strength gives out and the siren gets her way. I weep for those who do not even try to fight her. I weep because I know it is only a matter of time before I do the same.

And still she sings. She sings of the rest she can grant. She sings of the beauty beyond the life I live. She sings.

And I listen. I listen to her lies. I listen to her song. I listen and I fight. I fight because I care for the ones who care for me. I fight because if I have survived this long it’s because I’m hear to accomplish something. I fight because others need me to.

I fight and I fight and I fight. While she sings and waits. The siren has been here before. Taken many stronger than me. She sings, and sings, and sings. Sometimes her song is soft, soothing. Others it is harsh and demanding. And still others it is a mixture of the two.

I fight and she sings. And the screaming gets louder as I announce my imminent defeat. And the hands scrabble to find purchase. Each looking to stop the descent. The hands war for my soul. The siren pulling me further into her abyss. The one who care pulling me further towards the light. And somewhere in the middle I find a peace. A serenity. As I float in the ether between life and death. A calmness in the eye of the storm. A place to rest so that I may fight the siren and her call. So that i may help drag others from her depths. So that I may add my own shouts to the clamour.

But each rest gets shorter. Each rescue takes more effort. And so it adds and subtracts in a never-ending word problem until the solution is found at the end.

Will my life be a series of negatives and imaginary numbers or will I have created positives and quantified for others where they lacked?