You know when you wake up in the middle of the night, not screaming, not sweating, but you know there's something there. You know there's something wrong. You know when once again your dreams are filled with the paper mountains and patient razors that you thought you were rid of. You know when all the pictures on the wall stop watching you, when the mirror avoids your eyes, you know when the music filling your mind is poisonous and it never, ever quiets.
You know the feeling when you're sitting on the roof and then for the first time, you do it, you actually jump, and you land unharmed. You know when your best friend turns away from you without explanation, but you don't know why you're relieved. You know when you find yourself counting the hours, the days until another part of your life falls off. 2 days, 23 hours, 36 minutes, 34 seconds since Mum found out she has cancer. 190,306 seconds since Michael moved in. 116 hours since I had a real conversation with Ciaran. 7 days, 5 hours, 38 minutes, and 18 seconds since my last panic attack. Seconds away from the next one.
27,457,410 seconds since I've felt this helpless, but it's different now. No one I love is going to kill themselves. No one I need is going to fall apart. No one but myself.
You know there's something in you, you've tried to tell people. You are a cage, home to a golden bird and an even brighter monster. Why does no one see it? Why does no one believe you? But something's happening now, and you can feel it, this monster. Your bird has stopped singing and the beast has bloody feathers on its lips, swearing up and down she flew away, and no longer can you deny yourself the truth- you are the nightmal.
You're destructive, sadistic and manipulative. Every time you get close, close to euphoria, you snap back just so that you'll remember what you've given up. Your innocence, your right to love, your right to unblemished, untarnished, untainted friendship. You are wrong, in every way, a curse, you're bad blood and a burden on the beautiful things that love you. Everything you thought you were rid of lives under your skin, under your ribs like a tumour, and you're infected beyond a cure.
You have gloriously bloody fantasies, every night you spin around your head, thrusting knives into the ones you love under a mask of pretty words. Your nightmares, those murderous, colorless portraits of sound and dizziness, where rain can wash away the oil paintings replacing your lovers, where mountains are built on stilts to fool you and you're trapped in a world no one else can see. You've been lying to yourself, you've been slicing up your skin and now your insides are creeping out. You want out but everything about you is holding you back, pulling you in. You know it because you're the one who's spent hours at the bottom of the shower, holding your knees and screaming for it to stop. You know it because you've seen the sunrises and the sunsets every day for a week and the time still sits still. You know it because nobody seems to need you, seems to want you, seems to care for you, and you know that they're right.
You are the nightmal.