how the end always is

tie a rope around your neck, and let me kick you off a bungee It's a slow roll into stability, a gradual climb into something that isn't overwhelming, that isn't unpredictable in it's ferocity and force - it becomes a dull ebb, a flow of emotion that passes through, that goes overhead and leaves. Ignored. It seems easy to fall into routine, to forget I ever hurt so much, that the pain was still there quietly eating away at me. I pretended I was fine, that my permanent descent into darkness, into the fiery black pits of something larger than I, was only temporary, only a momentary problem as I tripped and stumbled through the world. I was going in circles, lapping the territories I knew and avoiding the ones I didn't, because I was all too scared of losing myself completely - I was afraid that I was going to wander a step to far and find myself somewhere completely new, somewhere that wasn't the Rift, that didn't have the eyes that watched, the hair on my back would not be raised and instead I'd lose my footing and I'd be caught suspended. For how long? And that's almost what it feels like, not feeling at all. Suspension, like I'm caught between one step and the next, attached to that one moment in time where my heart stops, my body freezes and I am no longer registering the world around me. I'm stuck there, hanging over the earth like some sort of dim gray cloud, like the moon or the sun, caught in the sky to only observe, to only witness, to become part of the audience rather than be a participant. It's like this for a while, dragging on in a never ending circle of sleep, eat, repeat, because my world is dark, there is nothing else for me to do other than exist - there is no family, no Throat or the like, it is all just a vast nothingness, and I am a part of that same mass that consumes the vision I'd had, the colourful shapes and figures - now nothing. I rely on the sounds around me, the feeling of the world shifting and changing as I too shift and change, adapting to the way it pushes and pulls me, always finding a place somewhere familiar. The rain forest, the Portal, but never beyond, because beyond that is a world unknown to me, a world I may never come to know. And it's sound that draws me in today, a familiar voice that rings out in the dark like a fire in the night, a burning light that guides me forward, has me tripping and stumbling because I've finally hit the second step, finally feel the ground beneath me as I run towards familiarity, towards family, towards the opportunity for the vast world around me to become a little less lonely. And then it's choking, it's mangled cries because I know who it is, I know her - Sikeax - I know that she's finally here and I'm weak, my knees can't hold my weight and my lungs can't fill with enough air. My heart can't seem to beat enough, my legs can't more fast enough as I slam into trees, topple over bushes, as I find my way over gnarled roots and past the saplings that bend beneath my weight as I plow through them to get to her. She is the last chance of hope, the final sliver of light before the door closes shut and traps me in a room I cannot escape. Suddenly I'm heaving, my stomach is clenching, knotting itself up, sweat drips from my brow and my mouth is dry, my tongue is swollen - words cannot leave my cracked lips, cannot surface as I hear her breathing, her sorrow and then I'm unable to keep up with the steps before me, it's momentary suspension, a familiar place above the ground, and then I'm crashing. I'm falling down, tumbling and wishing my words weren't so heavy, weren't so big and awful and I could just spit them out, but instead I'm gagging, gasping and shaking because I can feel the weight of Sikeax's sorrow, feel it crushing me beneath it, piling onto my own troubles as I present myself to her. "I'm sorry," they're broken syllables, foreign and bitter on my lips, leaving my tongue slowly, as though these were my first words, these were what I present to the world first and foremost, above all else. I apologize, I apologize because those are the only words I seem to remember, that I seem to know, I'm sorry, because I will never be good enough, never be strong enough, bold enough, persuasive enough - I'll just never be enough. So I fall into silence, a droning silence that leaves room only for the weeping of the world, that leaves me feeling cold and breathless, that leaves me begging for more than the white noise between us.

@Sikeax