Voices,
All screaming and polluting my brain with its negativity:
“You are lame.”
“A cool person wouldn’t do that.”
“Why am I even here?”
“What is the point?”
Feeling everyone in important vicinity sinking back into the tide,
My friends and family: a gust of wind, blown away, leaving me—
Utterly alone.
Because caring is much harder than not caring at all;
I am now but a single light, in a seemingly endless tunnel of darkness,
Surrounded by my demons,
All screaming:
“Stay here with us in this dark city.”
“Make it your home, and We: your brothers in darkness.”
And I did for a time,
Until I realized, the only way out is—Up.
A single light in an abysses of darkness.
How can I see the way out?
“If only I had a rope, I could pull myself out!”
But there is nothing.
Only my demons,
Maniacally laughing at my attempts at freedom.
But then there is another light,
Slowly bellowing in,
Forcing the demons to retreat back into the shadows.
What is this light you might ask?
What light can pierce this pitch veil?
Epiphany—

The darkness becomes a blur,
The demons calling my name, begging me to stay;
“Why have you forsaken us?”
“I thought we were brothers.”
“You’re not ever going to be happy you know, you might as well just stay with—“
“NO! I want to break though the walls of this disillusioned reality that…
I—created.”
The image getting clearer and clearer by the second,
Now, they turn their backs to me knowing winning is futile.
I see them drifting back into the darkness from wince they came.
They. Will. Not. Have. Me.
I will not be another casualty of Life’s bumpy roads.
The light getting brighter and brighter, piercing every fiber of my being;
Then, slowly blinking my eyes as if waking up from a long slumber,
I see a crisp image: My friends and family,
All standing around me,
Until I realized,
They’ve been there all along.
I just couldn’t see,
Because I was surrounded by darkness,
And darkness, is disillusion.
I’m not a liar; I still hear my demons,
But letting them control me,
I will never let happen again.
Beelzebub’s brother, I shall never be.

                  ~Aidan James Nicholas