Like the unpredictable peaks and valleys of the ocean waves, the dark misery seems to pull me further out with the tide, far out into the darkness.

Beating me down, crash after concentrated crash. 

Then just as quickly as it has begun, it all comes to a calm, numbing, and leveling horizon.

Like the line of a heartbeat that has stopped on that screen. The sound of the machine that tells what side of the universe you are on is giving the single, uninterrupted sound of death. 

Thoughts are hazy like a thick fog on a winding back mountain road, imprisoned inside my mind, and I can’t seem to process the outside world moving around me. It’s spinning with a constant slow motion, just fast enough to blur. 

Moments and hours can pass with no real progress at all. The glossy-eyed, empty-minded shell of a person letting time slip by. 

Then as quickly as that armored haze appeared, it is broken down and I’m left exposed. 

So fragile and delicate is my mind and soul, one wrong move and they can shatter as if I’m a glass window that a rock was just thrown through. 

Then black, thin, and fierce vines move in through the cracks. 

Entwining themselves into every thought, and strangulating all hope for a better life. So helpless am I to try and break free of their grasp. Their priority is to fill every fracture that can possibly let in the light of hope. 

This darkness pulls up memories I wish I’d forgotten and plays them like a film in my mind. The projections of my past cracking on the canvas screen.

I’m hoping that movie reel will jam and stop this madness inside my mind.

From being unable to process thoughts to overanalyzing and panic. 

The black vines are tightening and are invading all of my major systems now. 

The pace of the same heart as before is now as fast as a drummer keeping beat. Even with the change in tempo the world never becomes clear. 

How many moments have passed? How many days have been stolen by this disease? Did I miss another holiday or a memory with my son? 

Again, like before, the vines retreat quickly and leave everything exposed and beaten. 

Sunrise after sunrise this cycle continues and leaves things a little less bright than they were the days prior.

I’m left even more drained than the last revolution in my universe.

I’m reduced even more, to a person and soul I can’t seem to recognize. The waves pulling any recollection of myself, whatever that is, out into open water. 

~