Mirror.

In days of sadness, when i was but a memory floating through the smoke of my last cigarette, i used to wonder if there's anyone who could share my pain and enjoy it. Enjoy it as much as i did. In the end i would make the greatest gift to that person by giving all my pain to them. Problem was that i never knew if they would accept it willingly, like i have accepted it, with same fiery passion, readiness to hurt and feel that special kind of love for it. When one embraces the suffering and anguish, making it their entire world. Some of us can take it and turn it into something beautiful. Others will create something so foul and ugly that even they will turn away from it in disgust. Which path mine was going to be even i did not know in the beginning.

Now i know. But only after several mistakes, several buried images and endless nights spent scrubbing the blood stains off the carpet and walls. Knife would slice through their flesh with ease, removing limbs, distorting facial features, until nothing was left to be recognized anymore. It got to the point where i enjoyed it, and would make up something ugly just to have an excuse of feeling the blood splash on my face. Face i have come to hate, with it's mindless grin and wild eyes, unkept matted hair, and eyes blood-shot from too much coffee and not enough sleep.
But could i ever learn to love the person gazing back at me from the mirror?

Could i ever stop myself from going crazy, from losing a piece of myself with every passing night and day? Or was i destined to never wake up from that nightmare i wrote for myself? Endless questions used to go through my mind, never letting me rest, never letting me go, never leaving me alone, like a needy lover that stays with you not because they want you with them but because they are so used to you it would be unbearable if you were to just walk out the door.

Yet one night, when i woke up from self-induced stupor cause by alcohol, dizzy and having trouble realizing where i was, i got sick. I vomited bile and blood all over my desk, yet it felt good, as if all the bad that was kept inside of me was escaping through my mouth. It felt... cleansing.
That night i threw away all the bottles, all the old pictures and burned the book i was working on for several years, broke my mask and set the apartment on fire. I stood outside, watching the flame blaze through the windows, and the fire alarm was the funeral bell for the soul of the one that was writhing in agony, burning alive in that place, still chained to the bed, where i have left him to live out the last moments of his existence in penance for all he did.

I may have destroyed physical reminders, but i have embraced the memories and the past. I took my old mirror with me, the one i would always look into when i was trying to search my eyes for the last bits of humanity left in me.

I no longer need to search, i no longer need to run and to slash. I don't need to try to create. No matter what comes out from under my hands nowadays - it's never ugly. My soul is at rest and my heart is mended. I don't hurt and i don't try to hide from myself at night under the bed. I am not saying i'm cured, because i was never sick. I was simply lost, and my body poisoned by the one i thought was there to keep me alive. Shadows no longer try to tear at me, instead dancing on the walls now in the flickering light of candles.

I breath the night air fully, as if for the first time, filling my lungs with it to the brim, until it feels as if they will burst, and it's the best feeling in the world.

I may not be perfect and i may not be beautiful. I have scars because i have past, and i don't try to hide them, because i now know there are those who will see through and past them. There are those who will take me as i am, and see not who i was, but who i have become after all the times i have spent in that tiny cell of my own creation, where i used to hide.

I even took my old name back...