The light begins to flicker within my eyes, tension in my bones is apparent, I am awake. Another night wasted, another night spent waddling in the depths of my mind and a little further into the dream world. A night spent thinking, about what exactly? Well—everything, so much I want to become, what my future would be like, how life would be without the constant deteriorating mindset and the feeling of the devil himself eating away at your psyche. This is nothing new, for years this feeling has lingered in the air, not a good one but also not one my mind perceives as bad. You see, this is a little more than your average depression, for what the average person describes as torture—it’s not that for me. My mind finds a way to set these dark thoughts on their own pedestal, as a piece of royalty, something I enjoy, from an outside perspective you get the ostentatious view of nothing but pure joy and an opalescent tone. Though, when observed deeply you’re met with nothing but an ash pit of esoteric thoughts eating away from the core—but you love it. What first seemed entirely innocuous has suddenly changed, the pain, the gore, the struggle, the hardships, the darkness. It’s all present on the inside. What is shown on the outer shell is just a guise, hiding those who don’t understand from knowing what truly occupies inside you. Your world is introduced to and has shaken the hand of solipsism, but you’re not shaken. In fact—you’re not shaken by any of this, you’re mind is the one dealing the cards and I can assure you this card dealer is a cheat feeding off of your deepest hardships. To the normal population or simply, those who don’t understand your thoughts this would seem hellish, demonic, and down right sinister, but you enjoy it. You know these thoughts are wrong and you know you shouldn’t be having them but the cognitive dissonance is very real and it’s taking over. You know help is needed and should be drastically reached for but you also have a predilection to continue as is, to not tarnish what your mental demons are telling you what to enjoy and how to enjoy it. Being eaten from the core is soul crushing, finally reaching the point to where harmony is reached and the evil red hands of the devil himself have been washed off shore is life changing. But just as it begins to be washed away, the waves come back stronger, with a force much larger than you’ve ever seen and thus the hands of the corrupt come back and pull you into the waters. Being alone with the devil is a mental holocaust. No matter the place, no matter the time, it can happen. You feel it coming, the tension rising, a nascent heatwave begins to rise up from your chest and everything around you begins to fade. The classroom, the hallway, the job, your own home, it all resonates with you and as the heat reaches its peak you hear a voice, a raspy one, a dark one, a disturbed one. It tells you to get out, escape, do anything you can to save yourself of imminent danger. You run, anywhere, somewhere to relieve yourself. A wall gets the full brunt force of your fist, you shout out deep from within the pent up anger and sadness into the heavens and you let the precious teardrops filled with all the pain and horror drip from your eyes. You soon feel fitter and of higher quality than your previous self before such an incident but it’s simply temporary. While optimistically paving the way for mental clarity as well as adroit behavior do you now see how mouth watering and dangerous these thoughts are? How they can suddenly impact you in such a way that you’re frightened to ever show your face again or quite bluntly, to never be alive again?