Please go away…Don't hurt me anymore.

I thought I could be safe with you then later I thought I could be safe without you—I was wrong.

Now I can barely think.

Am I stronger now? Fearing your absence, your return, fearing you? I fight each day and I don't always win but I will never stop fighting.

I wonder who I'm fighting for…these days I don't really know. I certainly do not fight for myself; I can't even recognize myself in the mirror.

That pale face contrasting against bloodied lips, ever-changing eyes, and faded hair—I don't know who she is.

Over the years I've tried to mould my image, that imposturous face I see, into someone worth believing in, worth saving, worth loving. I'm always searching, always searching, for that woman.

Yet I don't fight for her, that seemingly phantom image of happiness, of peace, of a life without fear. I fight out of a deeply rooted need to never accept defeat even when all seems bleak.

I reflect on my journey, the lonely shadowed trail I have fought to follow—leaving a trail of my own, marked by my blood shed in battle.

I am worn ragged, bleeding—even the echoes of my mind are faint.

I am bound in chains of fatigue and doubt; each movement inflicts a numb agony. Yet still I walk trudging through the growing carcasses composed of a malicious substance, carcasses I slew.

I feel as though they reach out for me, mutilated fingers curling around my feet, my legs, attempting to drag me down by my waist, rip my battleworn arms from their sockets—yet in the shimmer of a distant dawn they vanish in a mist of sweat.

I waver in my travels; the journey seems cruel and unnecessary.

Hopeless…

Yet there is a lightness in my marrow, patches upon my armor, a growing strength, a growing peace that I earn with each excruciating step, every foe slain.

The fear does not leave, it is the suffocating sheet of oppression that hangs over my head casting me in darkness and at times blotting out the distant promise of dawn.

I want the fear to leave…I am too weary, too scarred, to continue to be afraid.

Yet peace is not yet attainable.

At times the single ray of an ever elusive dawn instills me with a serene moment of peace—Yet all too soon, the darkness overtakes me and fear rules over me once again.

I fight again and again, yearning to embrace the light, to shake off the rotting fingers curled around my body, I want to shake off my fetters and walk freely.

A panic sets in my blood urging me to run—Run to the dawn, run with all my might! Escape the darkness! Break free of my bondage! Embrace the light!

I feel the fiery motivation but I cool my excitement, I remember the empty happiness of temporary relief and the even crueler lashings of reality, curled nails dragging across my back in long strokes as the malicious substance around me once more takes hold.

I cry out into the nothingness, "Please go away! Don't hurt me anymore!"

But I am met with a dreadful impartiality.

The scabbed fingers, they rip into my skin.

The chains, they drag me into the bloodied mud trail—its weight causes my hope to sink.

The oppressive darkness, it chokes me until I am solely composed of terror.

Yet still I trudge forward fighting, always fighting, so that I may once more catch a glimpse of dawn and perhaps…with that hopeful light I will be able to see the woman in the mirror as myself and know that one day I will be free of pain, of fear, of you.