I Am Emptiness

I am invisibility. I am stagnation and hopelessness. I am static across the solar system and beyond. I am nothingness. I will invade you, overload your system. I’m going to make you crash…hard. I am the virus that destroys worlds. I will destroy yours, if you permit me. Do not raise the walls of your heart and mind, for I am already there. You know me to be inside your fortress. At the times that you are at your weakest, I become your fortress. Turn your streaming eyes to me, when the world shuts you out. Embrace me…while I am nothing but a nightmare. I will provide the void which you so desperately need. If you are truly broken, broken like a million shards of glass swirling in the sea, I will shield you. I will enfold you in my rotting embrace, and you will no longer know the pain of the concrete and factual world. You will no longer be full to bursting with questions, countless worries, and infinite foolish dreams.

They say that I’m simply a word that has been personified. I’m not personified, for I have no human qualities. They say I don’t matter, that I am not real. You know differently. You try not to see what does not belong in the mirror. The mirror is not only a reflective surface though, is it? You’ve seen the movement it. It’s like a tinted window. You know someone is watching you. It’s me, I’m always watching you. I see you all the time. I hear you sigh while you are lying in bed for hours on end, with your eyes open. I see you close your eyes at school, because you want everything to disappear. You don’t feel me land on your shoulder, carrying the weight of all that is immaterial. Don’t look over your shoulder, you won’t see me there. Do not grasp for me in the deepest, darkest corners of your being, trying to weed me out. I am immaterial. The blind fingers of your mind will close around nothingness, and you will come up empty. Do not think to shine great spotlights outward, looking for me. You will find naught but smoke and mirrors, and mirrored smoke. If you persist in your search, trust me when I tell you, you won’t like it when you truly find me.

I am defiance incarnate. I go against the grain of everything that you know. Despite all of your best efforts, you cannot bend me to your will. You won’t make me go away. You cannot call me to you on a whim. I am forever sought, but never found. Studied, but not understood. Fought but never beaten by the likes of you. I am a hunter. Try to hide from me, you will find that I am all around. Anywhere you have an unanswered question, I am there. I am what you fear, without body or face.  I am the space that is unfilled by space itself. I am an anomaly. I paint the blackness under your bed at night. I am the shadow that you cast, always mocking you. As much as you hate it, or love it the fact is that we are never apart, you and I. You may forget me from time to time, but when your days cease to go well for you, and nothing satisfies your hunger for fulfillment, I am here.

 When your head hits the pillow and your eyes close, I emerge from behind the walls of consciousness to lay waste to reality. I will destroy your memories and meanings. I hid your discoveries beneath my shattered crystalline wings. I am the place that all lost objects go to. I live in the lost people, the unguided and confused. Those who have no one to call a friend know me intimately. If you have no one, you know me to be your best and closest friend.  I am hungry, you let me feed on your sense of purpose. I inhale your dreams and hopes. I am both retrograde and anterograde amnesia. You and I are symbiotic. I feed off of you, I decrease your years, and in return you get the ability to be apathetic. I numb you to the pain of living in a cruel world. I hate you for experiencing life, and you hate me for taking yours away. We rage at each other, always in silence.  When you feel the gusts of wind on your face, it is me screaming noiselessly at you. You sleep with your music in your ears to drown out my whisperings.  When you wake from a nightmare, and feel frightened and lost, blame me. When you feel hollow inside, blame me. When the world and everything in it seems empty, blame me. I will destroy you and everything that you think you’ve worked for. You will become hollow like me.

I will break you. Your dreams will lie shattered and bleeding on the rocky ground. You will be only a husk, a shell of your former brilliance. Fight Me.

Stand up for what you believe is good and real. Show me that you’ve got what it takes to push me out. Fight back against despair and depression and loneliness with every benevolent weapon that you hold in your arsenal. Show me what you’re made of, because until you kill me, I’ll just keep on coming. I don’t think you’ve got what it takes, to battle a non-entity like me. You think you’re strong? Prove it.

I am emptiness. What are you?