Challenge Submission Battle of the Mind

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Challenge Submission Battle of the Mind

BlackBlood

Where the World Ends...
Local time
Today 1:36 PM
Messages
8,485
Age
40
Location
In the Dark places of your mind....
Pronouns
he/him/they/them
People always think the greatest battles involve weapons. To fight, you lift a sword, or an ax, or chant a spell. They could not be more wrong. The worst battles, the most destructive ones, are fought within. Nothing has to even be said- it just has to leave that dark and growing void that devours everything good, before or after. This is my life. This is my battle.

I thought he loved me. We seemed perfect in every way, after all, who could imagine that meeting yourself from another time and place could be the thing that hurts most? We agreed on everything. We knew who our enemies were. We knew who we could trust. We did everything together, and when one of us was too tired to hold up the mantle the other said rest, I have it. Only... I am left holding it, alone. The one person I thought I could rely on, me, has gone. I am holding up a world that has long fallen apart.

I should let go. I tell myself this over and over. Let go, stop fighting. Stop believing. Was it not you who said a traitor can never be trusted? He left you here, he told you he would be back, and now? Now you struggle to hold it together- for what? What do you gain?

What is there to lose, though? What is there to lose when you have already lost it all? When everything is gone and that black and endless void threatens to consume you? And so you fight as you always have and always will. I may not win, but I never lose. Those words, they are haunting. I have never been able to walk away. I have always struggled to keep moving even when all odds are against me.

I have felt the bite of weapons in my primordial being. I have lived beyond many, and still... still I keep moving. I keep fighting to cling to this thing called life. Even as I feel myself grow numb, as I scream at myself to let go, I keep clinging. I push to move to the next day, clutching at the shreds of memory that threaten to fade away if I don't fight to keep them fresh. I am slowly forgetting their faces, but I remember him. I can't forget him.

He looks at me from every mirror I pass. His voice echoes with every word I say. I feel him in every movement, whether I want to forget or not- because he was me. He lives as long as I am alive.

Others have told me, no, taught me, to recall that though he and I are the same, we are also not. Even though he was literally another version of me, I am not him. I see his loss as a betrayal. For a long time, I saw myself as the traitor, and I do not abide by traitors. I never have. I refuse to allow such to stay close enough to cause harm, and if they refuse to leave? I end them. I almost- but I couldn't. I could not end my existence. The fire refuses to die. That created this never-ending and all-consuming void inside of me that I must struggle with every day.

What battle can even compare to one that is inside? One that cannot be given a finale until you, yourself, are gone? I cling to reasons why I continue to fight. I find them in others. I must fight for those who depend upon me. I must fight for those who love me. I must not become the one who left me by doing the same to them. I know this living death. It is my existence now, but... they give me reason. I must not condemn anyone else to this eternal hell I am in. This battle to live... to feel... to move... this battle to feel alive and real... to recall what it was to feel my smile. No, I cannot become him. I cannot stop fighting.

I may not win- but I cannot lose.

~Mimosa~
 
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