Midnight Musings (Personal)

The night air is still, silent save for the odd taxi or car or bus that speeds past the window. They get noisy, but it is a small price to pay to be able to see the open sky right outside the room. One turn to the left from the desk and the calming black skies are there.

A gentle breeze blows, shifting the tendrils of hair that escape from the messy bun made when the length became too much of a hassle to deal with. The laptop that sits on the side of the desk plays music, a sweetly cheerful Japanese song. It’s Kazuki Kato again, singing with his heart and begging in the song for the listener or some mysterious lover of his to stay by his side. Then the song ends and immediately starts on a darker-sounding song. This time he’s a vampire, crooning about the desire he feels to corrupt the innocence of his victim.

It’s a quiet night, and the remains of film theory notes lay scattered on the desk. An old notebook filled with messily elongated handwriting lies open, baring its secrets (or perhaps more film theory notes) for the world to see.

I sit in front of my laptop, wondering what to type about. Anger and despair, loneliness and depression… They, along with a sporadic urge for suicide, have always been my muses.  After all, I have never been known to write anything cheerful or light-hearted. My friends ask me why I always write such depressing pieces, short poems of mine. They ask why I don’t write anything cheerful. After all, it can’t possibly be good to keep writing about death.

The thing is that besides the anger and the pain, I don’t know what else I can write about. I'm not like others I know, who can pen truly beautiful short stories that have stories upon stories in them. All I can do is pen rough poems, and try to make them flow, and hope that they're not all too similar or amateurish. I'm not putting myself down or anything, because this is a fact. There is nothing depressing or cheerful about this.

Cheerful thoughts… They mean nothing to me. Although I love to listen to music that isn't always happy, I like to listen to cheerful music too. The only thing is that even though I feel lighter when I listen to them, it's not long before the thoughts and voices come back. I’m not in a state of severe depression 24/7, because I do have my cheerful moments, and pretty often too, especially when I’m with my friends. I joke about the stupidest things, and laugh as long and loud as I like.

It’s when I’m alone that the laughter dies in my throat and the smile slips off my face. That’s when the mask cracks, just a little bit, before it seals itself again. I don’t see my demon all the time, but she’s inside of me, and she will never leave. Say what you like. No amount of laughter or smiling will erase her, because to kill her is to kill me. We are one, my demon and I. We cannot live without the other.

Most of the time she is either quiet or muttering a steady stream of thoughts that influence my own, though whether consciously or subconsciously I do not know. Sometimes she speaks up, like when she gets bored and suggests that I injure myself, just so she can watch the blood flow. She enjoys watching blood well up from a wound and drip down.

Her and I, we are not separate. When she took over my thoughts, there used to be a more noticeable change. Friends would notice that I wasn’t myself. And now… There is no difference between her and I, especially when she takes over. That is the true danger for those around me. No one will be able to tell when I am truly me and when she has taken over enough that I don’t exist in my mind anymore. Maybe even I won’t be able to tell anymore.

I’m not depressed 24/7. I don’t need medicine. I’m just speaking some of the many thoughts that are jumbled up in my mind, and hoping that I’m not sounding too unbalanced. I have cheerful moments, and I feel happy too. It’s just that this sadness, this pain, this is who I am. I’m not like some others who can tap into their pain and sorrow in an instant and draw from that well, because my pain chooses to hide itself. My own emotions have masks, because I’m the one who’s their mistress, who’s bound to her own masks without any way of breaking her chains, of taking her masks off.

I have said entirely too much, but I felt the pull of this post. I felt the need to post this, for reasons that I cannot comprehend. These are some of my thoughts, and merely the tip of my emotional iceberg, but I do ask you to tread lightly on them, for I will make sure that I never post something as deeply personal as this any more.