Elysium

I heaved in, and out. The air was thick in my lungs.

Have you ever been hit by the sudden realization that everything just wasn’t quite right? That change in the atmosphere where you’re smiling and the next you’re not, noticing that for just a second you where happy when deep down inside, you know you're anything but.

That numbing understanding that you are not you.

It’s that fact that keeps you up at night, thinking, and all the while reminiscing on old jagged thoughts that cut into your skull like needles pressed against your veins. Sometimes you just wish they’d fall away, leave you feeling that little bit safer, that little bit more secure. Sometimes you just wish they’d at least be warm needles, or even scalding hot needles so as to feel less numb, so you’d at least feel something while knowing all these things.

And sometimes you just wish they’d cut into you, consuming you whole; your entire being and existence becoming void in an instant.

It’s like for a moment you want to die.

The most tormented of us lay awake at night, and the more we know the more we suffer, it seems. In a way you look down upon those who sleep peacefully, those insignificant beings who would never be able to comprehend, let alone empathize what has become routine torture. On the other hand, you envy them for their oblivious nature, their lack of understanding being the very thing that anchors them in their happiness and mirth.

I sit here now, thinking as I often do. Thoughts come, thoughts go. More often than not, the thoughts are recurring. Never exactly the same, but always returning, kind of like how the stars are always there, but they always shift the slightest bit. I think often, that it's this thought that determines what we are. The notion that as an entity we rely on comfort to keep us sane, in a world where comfort is only obtained by those who don’t see it, is what really binds us to our sanity. Either we stand by our safety harness of what we know, and never perceive beyond, or we let our wildest imaginations catch wind of our intentions, and we just drift, on and on, deeper and deeper into ourselves, where we get lost among our inner demons and descend into madness.

It’s all like a game, where our very sanity is at stake in our minds, and our life, our oh so precious life, kept in our little heart, is the bet we have made. And while the mind can recover from those mishaps and stumbles, our hearts cannot.

Our hearts are a coffin holding our determination, our inspiration, and each second its as if we might let it into the ground and lose this game of life, where our madness is ensured.

Knowing all this, it’s like realizing I am my own demon. I cannot confront myself, not in the most conventional method. Every time I enter this state of thought, my little heart's coffin becomes light in my shaking hands, so so very weightless and priceless, I can’t control what I might do next.
And I feel it being dragged under.

-- Excerpt from Norin's journal