The Darkness Within

Someone who I admire greatly said: 

“I told you about the darkness not because I wanted your pity, but because I needed it to exist somewhere outside of me.” 

My soul claimed those words and embraced them like a lover. 

Writing gave me, gives me, a place to put my own darknesses. It doesn’t matter to me if anyone ever reads me. This I do for me. For my sanity. 

Maybe someday, someone will claim my words and hold them close because they, too, have cracked themselves open to evict the demons that reside inside. 

It is a brave thing to leash the thing you’ve sat in silence with for so long. Years and years of sadness, trauma, fear and heartache, layer after layer, I had to peel my own darkness off like a second skin. I mourned, I grieved through the pain.

And I wrote.  

I’m still picking at the pieces that remain.