What have I become?

There's a darkness in all of us.

My passion is dead. It’s been so long since I’ve felt it. The itching at my fingertips, the ache in my head that won’t subside, the little whispers that turn into shouts that turn into words that turn into stories that demand to be heard. What happened to her? What happened to the girl who wasn’t afraid? She clawed at the darkness, she couldn’t find the light so she created it, she became it. What happened to that spirit that couldn’t be tamed?

What if she is gone forever? I search for her sometimes, in the eyes of the man who used to love her, in the books that held pieces of her soul, in the words she wrote when it didn’t matter if anyone ever read them. I feel her sometimes, in the front row at rock shows screaming the words, in the touch of a stranger before the guilt sets in, in the fleeting moments of yearning for a world she once thought she could build. When all else fails I find her at the bottom of a bottle of Jack... but in the end, she is fleeting and empty. Always empty. Why am I so f*cking empty?

God, the emptiness. Have you ever felt it? Do you even know how to describe something that feels like nothing? She would have known what to tell you. She’d help you find a way out. But I am not her, not anymore. The emptiness is like a snowstorm, a thousand icy fingertips wrapped around my neck. I'm choking, choking as it whispers to me. You are nothing, it says. You are water that turns to ice that shatters and turns into nothing. It has whispered to me for so long, and I have learned the truth. I will never feel again.

Wait. Please, wait. I hear her voice, somehow breaking through the cold. But it’s too late. The girl who claws at darkness got the black beneath her fingernails and it is dripping down her palms, reaching through her skin and grasping onto her veins with vicious talons. Her blood is red but then it is black and I hear her screaming, I hear me screaming. I feel our tears as I watch her die. I watch her die and as she takes her last breath, I feel nothing.

So, you want to know what happened to the girl who clawed at darkness?

In the end, she couldn’t fight it. She couldn’t fight it, and so she became it.