Aetherias Moon

by Aetherias Moon

I’m trapped in darkness. The abyss is all-consuming, clawing down my throat and burying in my heart. I feel nothing. Cold isn’t so much a sensation, but an existence. An aspect of my soul entwined in the DNA of my decaying body. Am I dead, alive, something in between?

A flicker

A wave of heat

I’m so cold it hurts

And yet the burn is so good

I run towards it. Maybe I walk, maybe I crawl. I’m numb. I’m delirious.

Nothing makes sense anymore. Except that warmth in the distance.

It’s my goal…

It’s my everything.

But it’s so far and I’m so very cold. Is it moving away? The flickering intensifies. Is it weakening? Is my world getting colder?

The idea speeds me forward.

I need it.

I need it.

Creativity and hope are the same for me. That likely isn’t true for everyone. Not everyone puts as much stock in creativity as I do. To me, creativity is the breath of life. I don’t know how to exist without it; I don’t know how to function, to be happy without it.

So what happens when it goes away?

I don’t do very well. I’m here. I’m a person. But more like a shell, there’s something missing. Something off with me. I kind of forget what it’s all about, you know? Life, I mean. What’s exactly the point of it all?

I don’t know

The darkness thickens around me. It weighs me down and I crumble further into the muck. Whispers curl around me. I can’t hear them. Still, as I stand up, I cover my ears, smearing them with mud.

The flame is still there.

It flickers in the stale air, but refuses to die. There’s a strength in that.

You’re useless

Weak

A failure

Embarrassing

I gasp and start running, but the voices only grow louder. The flame doesn’t seem any closer.

A terrible person

Disgusting

Stupid

I stop moving.

Just give up.

I crouch and scream.

There are times when I have the answer to that question. What’s the point of it all? Being with my partner or maybe creating beautiful pieces of writing. There are lots of things that I want. But sometimes my wants turn into facts, not feelings. I no longer have the dream of creating amazing pieces of writing but the fact that I want to do it, because I am numb. I am so numb and scared to feel again. Maybe that doesn’t make sense. Maybe nothing I do makes sense anymore. Maybe I’m lost to the world now. Lost in the darkness.

Just give up.

Just give up

Just. Give. Up.

Just give up? Wouldn’t that be nice?

I blink away tears that frighten me as they fall. Where had they come from? I run even before my mind registers it. I can’t think. I don’t want to think anymore. I hate my mind, the thoughts inside of it.

You’ll never reach it.

Tears speck the darkness as pops of footsteps coming out of muck increase in frequency. The light appears to move, dancing further away, growing smaller.

The darkness laughs.

I cry and raise my hand in front of me. I cup the distant flame and wish on a star.

Can you force hope into existence? Can you fake it until you make it? Can you say “I believe,” even when you don’t? Can you sit down at the keyboard and put down words when your soul is crying out, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!”

You can.

You will.

Or maybe you won’t. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m the one who had to lie to myself to find the way. Maybe I had to believe I had found the light even when I hadn’t.

I close my fist around nothing, hearing the laughter grow louder. Louder and louder until it becomes a roar. I fall to the ground. There is no flame anymore, as if with one reach I had put it out. I pull my fist in towards my heart.

Flutter.

I open my hand and there unfolds a wave of white heat, small and wavering as it dances. A smile crosses my lips and the laughter stops. Silence falls like snow on Christmas. A warm tear slips down my cheek.

I press the flicker in towards my chest. Pressing it in towards my heart, until its little warmth flickers with my heartbeat.

Warmth spreads through my body until my fingertips could feel the cool of the muck. Until I could remember where I was.

Then the tears fell, hard and fast.

But the warmth stayed.

It danced and twirled.

It thumped and swirled.

It alighted and blazed.

Reminded me I stayed.

That I’m alive

The darkness doesn’t go away that easily. The mocking voices that whisper vitriol. The days when it’s hard to get out of bed. The times you can’t feel that flicker in your chest. When the sludge feels too thick to even sense that there’s a light in your heart at all. But it is there. It stays with you always. The light of creativity, of hope, of beauty and kindness.

Always.

-Aether

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