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Behind My Mask
I always try to run from this darkness that chases me relentlessly , but it is starting to engulf more and more of the light I have left…I’m worried that eventually it will overcome me completely. I don’t think I have the energy to run from this anymore. I used to can ignore it and push it away...but not anymore. I am not strong enough. I don’t have enough energy left in me to keep holding up this mask upon my face, the one that takes up all of my energy. I am so tired. So weak. It takes physical effort to breathe. It takes up all I have to simply make it through the day. I don’t know how I can do any more than that, right now. I just want it all to stop. Everything is happening so fast and I feel like there’s no break. I can’t keep running on this hamster wheel. Life is running ahead of me. Expecting me to keep up. But I can’t. I am stuck in the darkness. I can’t pretend it doesn’t exist anymore. It has taken all that I have and I have no more fight in me to pretend and be okay any longer. I have been pretending for far too long. So please do not expect me to ignore the pain I feel. Please do not ask me to act happy. Please do not tell me to ignore the future. Please do not ask me to try and pretend it doesn’t exist. Please don’t tell me that my pain isn’t real, or that it is all in my head. Don’t tell me that talking about it makes it more real because, believe me, it is as real as it gets even if it’s “in my head.” In a way…it’s even worse. Talking about it helps. Because then, for once, I don’t have to pretend and be happy. Like I’m not dying inside. For once I feel like I can breathe. I just lost the little fight I had left. Sorry I’m not strong enough. I just can’t push off this demon from my back. It’s heavy, weighing me down more and more with each breath that I take. It is like a stab in the heart as I realize this is only the beginning. I still have so much more living to do before I can finally be at rest. And that is what hurts the most.
William S Burroughs
"I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death, and to a realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing. I live with the constant threat of possession, and a constant need to escape from possession, from control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a life long struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out."
― William S Burroughs
I feel very close to those words he chose to use, I relate with that profoundly, I find that the only way I can get out of what controls me and what is as you put it "this darkness that chases me relentlessly" is to write my way out. Burroughs once said about possession. “People keep trying to tell me that it's a psychological thing that's inside me, I don't know why people can't accept the idea that maybe it is outside me and what's the difference between inside me and outside me anyway"
Write your way out.