Red Bull lingers on my bottom lip, sweet and metallic. I lick my lips, which are cracked and dry, before sitting down to write. The glowing screen burns my eyes in the hollow darkness of my room. I set my fingers above the keyboard but they freeze in place. I’m scared. My eyes water and my cold fingers shake. I can’t write, I can’t...I can’t do anything. Nothing feels in my control, like the balance of the universe continues to fire these giant hurdles five feet in front of my trail, just to see me trip and skid on asphalt. Maybe I’m ranting now, I don’t really care anymore. The throbbing pain at the bottom of my gut gives me the lingering feeling of failure. I always get this feeling before I shatter, before everything inside me just falls apart and my very being that’s kept locked up behind a steel wall and padlock of cold false hope clutches throat and finds it’s way into my chest. It pulsates and breathes venom into my heart. Doubling over I choke and lose air, the room around me blurs and swirls. I try to scream but only a whisper escapes my throat. Smokey venom pours out of my mouth and slithers into the air, with it every bit of emotion and humanity I had left. By the time I cough all of what’s left I’m only a shell wearing a fake smile, just a gray world surrounds body. It’s an almost perfect pairing, a gray world to accompany a lifeless and gray puppet, abiding by the rules, just so she can jump over the hurdles thrown at her. Now I’m talking in third person, what next? Hearing voices, hallucinations, strokes of panic in public? Sooner or later my gray world will implode, taking me with it. But for now the puppet I’m left as shall protect me, I’ll never be hurt and nothing will come near my blackened heart. Listening to the sound of my ragged breath, I’m pulled into the gentle arms of a deep sleep, one from which I hope to never awaken from.