The Percentage Division of Control
Darling, are you ok?, She asks, the fakeness of concern oozing out of Her every last pore.
You’ve barely repeated the same pattern over and over again until you reach the point of madness, She continues, knowing, sensing, understanding Her hold of me is almost gone, hanging on to the very last thread of power She still has.
I look at Her, the once mesmerizing view turning into the unholy sight She actually is.
Her hair hangs limp and greasy, falling flat against Her scalp.
Her skin unkempt, dark circles under Her eyes.
Her fingers, stained from cheap tobacco.
Hands, trembling from insecurity, as She sips her drink.
I once thought She was beautiful. I once saw Her as powerful. I once thought Her pull was intoxicating, inescapable.
Today, I see Her as the villain She is. A carcass of Her former self. The Heroine Chic personification of my mind’s darkest side.
The Darkness tried returning and building Her Wall time and time again. Each turn weaker than the last.
And today, calling a truce, She sits us down at the large, oval-shaped table, recreating the percentage division of control over how much I’d let Her in this time.
I stand my ground, not willing to negotiate anymore.
She stands her ground, using the final Ace in the hole; the patterns I can’t seem to escape
Self-destructing in the process.
From time immemorial, Humanity tried to escape the existentially nihilist nature of life. Oh, how we struggled to create meaning and purpose in a world lacking any inherent significance.
Horibble things happening without reason is an unbearable thought. The random and unfair nature of life had to have a deeper meaning. Otherwise, what? Is the pain for nothing?
Humans created gods to escape loneliness and bring meaning to occurences with little significance. First there was the Sun, feeding the crops. Then there was jesus, feeding the Poor.
A lot of idols in-between, wars fought over who created the better story, laments written as the compass for the skies.
After we finally killed god, we gave other purposes to the mechanisms conducting our lives: money, growth, love, health, happiness, family, war, power, sex.
We searched, cried, bled, fought for our purposes.
Wars fought over who created the better story.
Me?
Aimless without a purpose, I took my meaning from escaping Her.
Caged myself around a pattern, repeating the same story with different ensemble casts, relieving the same feelings under different names, an NPC aiding a quest, unaware of Her pushing my buttons.
Her?
I (mis)believed She was a hauntingly beautiful villain. Ethereal in how She whispered my name, locking me in, breathing me out.
Today I see a certain vulnerability in the way Her hair frames her face. I see hints at a deeper story of struggle and hardship.
I see Her for who she really is: abandonment, rejection, injustice.
Fear.
Mother, hallowed be thy name.
I see Her caring the fears thrusted upon Her by her mother, Her mother’s mother, Her mother’s grandmother.
I see Her caring the pain of past lives and past loves, hunger and death weaving into a sleeky, reptilian-almost dress, an armour of power and fear, hiding Her inner child, hurt, scared, alone.
I walk the lonely pattern as I did so many times before, since I forgotten the days of Now and started living the days of Before and the Afters, a weight on my shoulders. Impossible to drop, mine to carry, mine to own, not mine to create.
I see Her at the end of the road and I am no longer scared, no longer helpless, no longer angry.
I understand, I finally understand.
I breathe, I finally breathe.
When I first met The Darkness, She was trying to shelter me from the pain of being inadequate.
Other times I saw Her, she came to hide me from a life lived without love.
On some rare occasions she was there because I felt Shame and Guilt and Loss.
She was a friend — but a broken one, one that feasted upon the stories of those before Her, building a suit of armour out of unhappy destinies She witnessed before She came into my life.
She lived others’ lives as if they were Her own, felt others’ pain as if it was Her own.
Then, out of the broken love She didn’t know how to show, She build a wall, not leaving room for a door. She took my stories and my songs and my mother’s hugs and left her box of torments to play with instead. Because She never had any toys to give, She gifted the only things She could; burdens that weren’t even Hers to carry.
I renounce the pattern and embrace you instead, I whisper, pulling Her in, breathing her in, holding her close.
Tired eyes grow weary, breath starts getting erratic, the heart beats faster as tears get loose and she whimpers, still, all the anger gone, all the power lost.
Liberated, euphoric, she cries.
You are safe, you are loved, you are safe, you are loved, you are safe, you are loved.
I chant over and over and over again, as the Sun is running laps on the Sky, leaves going from nothing to green to orange to nothing again.
We’re sheltered and we’re nestled in, away from them all, at our large, oval-shaped table, where we finally reach our truce.
I first met The Darkness in this Story.
