Running

It's night time. That fact has always somewhat worried me. It's not the dark or the people that come out or the terrible things that can happen at night. It's the silence, the fact that everyone is asleep and reality starts to skew. And the nightmares that pursue at night.

Reality has been slipping through my fingers my whole life, but it's getting worse. I've started having dreams about running, the kind of dreams where I'm not sure where I'm running from or to or how I'm even mustering the energy to run. The kind of dreams the seems very real and the kind that wakes a person in a cold sweat. The kind of dream I'd do anything to avoid, even if it meant never sleeping again.

I think the biggest problem is that it's not entirely a nightmare, I think it might be a glorious dream. It feels so free to run, and run until everything, every person, every goal, every memory, is gone. And then to flop on the grass somewhere that is unfamiliar and look up at the sky and perhaps, for just a second, feel at peace. To feel innocence and ignorance again, for just a moment.

The problem is, even in my dreams I will look down and the scars of my past are still there. They never leave me alone, the haunt me day and night. And when I see them I remember that I will never know what it means to be innocent again. And so all I can do is get up and run again. Run until there is no strength left, not even in my own mind, to continue forward. And I fall. And I wake, back into this reality that I can not avoid.

Sleep used to be my sanctuary, the only place I could go to escape. But now even that is not safe, if I sleep I lose control. And I crave control with all that I am. I have scars from trying, and failing, to control what I am. And now even that is not working.

"Look what he's done to you, it isn't fair, your light was bright and new, he didn't care, he took the heart of a little girl and made it grow up too fast. Now words like innocence, don't mean a thing, you hear the music play, but you can't sing, those pictures in your mind keep you locked up inside your past."

Bitter and sweet have become one in the same, pain and happiness, good and bad, all the lines are blurred. Love and fear, what is the difference? I am so afraid of love that there is no distinction. When the pain brings peace, it becomes a joy. When all I want is to rip the scars away from my skin and to feel the blood dripping from new wounds. How sweet it is to bleed!

I've never been afraid of heights. I love the dizziness that is looking down, I love the rush of falling. But I hate to feel happy; that I fear. There is so far to fall, and no choice but to fall from such heights. But when I'm down here, at least I know. When all the hope has rushed out of me, then I know what is true and I am able to stop running. The only relief is in surrender to the darkness. To bleed. To give up. To fall into deep, dreamless, silent, nothingness.