No words in any language could describe the way I felt. I knew this was coming, had told myself it wasn’t going to be so bad. I would likely make friends despite my introverted-self. But a small Piece inside me kept repeating over and over it wouldn’t go as planned. I wouldn’t stop procrastinating. I wouldn’t stop getting panic attacks. I wouldn’t make any friends. All these horrible mantras the Piece of me repeated were ignored for the most part within my brain, the other Pieces overpowering its negativity and cynicism. At times in the past, my negative Piece had grown to take over my other Pieces, holding them hostage. A fresh start would always cause it to shrink, a good day without stress, an easy night with nothing to worry about. As I entered that new stage in my life, I kept trying to keep my Piece of negativity small within the frothy green ocean that was my mind. That ocean contained my thoughts in its tides, pulling them in and out, letting them tumble in my head until they could tumble no more. My Pieces influenced these thoughts and the way the ocean carried them, gerrymandering them to influence the way I thought and spoke and acted. Most times my negative Piece wouldn’t influence the ocean of thought too much, as much as anyone else has darker thoughts. My Pieces had always coexisted before, working together to keep my thoughts from crashing below the surface of the ocean. But as time passed, the Piece grew. I began to grow negative all the time and cynicism marked every word that came from my mouth as its own.
The Piece’s mantras increased in quantity and fervor. You won’t be good enough. You’ll never make friends again. You’ll be the cliche outcast. It won’t turn out like the TV show. You’ll end up sitting all alone again. Because the cycle continuous, always spinning. You lose something, you’re alone, you find something, you lose it. You’re alone. You’re alone. You are alone.
Then, the Piece started fighting with the others. Causing trouble within my mind. Overpowering the Pieces that used to love learning and had all the time in the world for reading, the Pieces who tried their best with numbers, the one who held my dreams tight. My negative Piece told the other Pieces they were stupid, ripped my world right out of their hands, convinced them they would never be good with numbers or anything else for that matter.
The cycle has repeated itself. My negative Piece has shrunken down the others into minuscule pinpricks. The Piece let me believe the worst in everything, made my ocean of thoughts sing its mantras of destruction in a haphazard symphony of chaos. You’ll never be good at anything, you’ll fail at it all. You’ll never reach your goals. Now, the Pieces my parasitic Piece of negativity has made disappear are practically gone, possibly forever. My ocean of thoughts is now a battlefield where the remnant thoughts of my old self fight and lose against the thoughts the negative Piece has thrown at them. Time and time again, they lose in their minute number and weakness.
I knew this was coming. I told myself it wasn’t going to be so bad.
The mantras continue.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get my piece back.
But despite all this, the war inside my mind, the darkness, I still believe in a light. In a hidden place within me, there must be a spark. No matter how many times my negative forces crush it, no matter how many times I let the darkness consume me, let it win the wars, I know the light will come back one day. It must. And when it does, I will have fought and won to get it back.