The Abyss

Photo by Филипп Алеев from Pexels

Sometimes I am in the abyss,

and sometimes,

I am the Abyss.

As the Abyss, I am always seeking light. Every pocket of sunrise that I swallow strikes me like lightning –– illuminating my insides for one clarifying second before it gets cleaved and absorbed into darkness too.

I think I become the Abyss when I am in the abyss for too long, and I can no longer tell where it begins and where I am made whole without it.

Lately, I’ve been trying to find the courage and conviction to leave the never ending locker room of waiting for things to get better, and trying not to step into cracks stuffed with the chewed up gum of other people’s expectations.

I’ve been trying to be brave enough to not look into the house of mirrors that keeps reflecting the neon graffitied slurs of my self doubts, magnifying the sticky phantoms of my what-ifs, and echoing the siren calls of my anxiety set to the bass of my escalating heartbeat.

How easy it is to be held down by rocks under water, until I realize that I am also both the rocks and the water that binds me.

Which is not to say that it is easy to lift rocks that have teeth, or to drain the water that has accumulated into a small ocean around me.