Echoes in the Dark Abyss
*****TW*****
I have no idea what I want to write… I have big, deep, sad, confusing emotions. It might just be a brain dump full of unrelated, confused, fragmented, disjointed thoughts… I hope you can all sort the wheat from the chaff.
The loneliness. Let’s start with that. It’s not just “I wish I were around people”, the normal kind of lonely. Have you ever been in a deep pit, where you can see absolutely nothing, the walls are closing in on you, you feel alone and scared and panicked and afraid? You don’t see a way out, not even a speck of light. You know there are small comforts around you in the pit, water and food and a flashlight even, but you’re too paralyzed to see or use them. Strange noises surround you, haunting and confusing you, which make you cover your ears and scream from the loudness and shrillness and confusion. Bats fly at your face and their flapping wings beat you over the head. The noise, the static, the voices that tell you you’re stuck there and will never, EVER, get out. The never-ending torrent of sound and music and every form of noise and words and thoughts and panic you can think of. Not just minutes of this torture. Not hours. YEARS. Decades. The darkness, the audio torture, the loneliness, the panic and terror and sheer frustration. The absolute NOTHINGNESS, that turns to numbness in order to survive. Panic attacks. Paranoia. Anxiety. Restlessness. Fear. Terror. Bare survival.
And this is NOTHING compared to what I endure every single day.
Remembering him hurting me. Not being able to find love while actively seeking it out. Being ghosted by the people I called friend. Dealing with trauma and crisis and being on alert and being “on” at all times.
The strong desire to crawl into a man’s arms and curl up into a scared ball and just… rest there. Safe, able to let down my guard, cuddled and warm and able to let go.
The craving to have a place in my closet where I can curl up and hide and not exist, if only for a few minutes.
The days where my PTSD gets so bad, I inwardly flinch when a man walks near me. Waiting to be beaten.
Watching my friends fall in love, making me wistful of what could be, but I’m not allowed to have…
Being terrified of becoming diabetic (currently prediabetic)… I stopped caring, stopped trying. Wishing I’d get diabetes so my life can be cut shorter, and I don’t have to endure this cruel torture anymore.
Restlessly longing for more, reaching for dopamine. Happiness doesn’t even register in my brain anymore. Barely a blip in my synapses. My brain doesn’t light up when amazing things happen. My brain doesn’t function anymore.
The normal things people say just make me laugh inside. “It’ll get better. This will pass. Try breathing. See a therapist. Watch a movie. Try exercise.”
None of it works.
None of it.
The trauma. The pain. The fear.
If you’ve never endured it, you don’t understand.
Those dumb little fixes and “sending good thoughts” isn’t going to make my brain better. Isn’t going to make me forget when he tried to break my finger and threw me out of his car.
It’s not gonna bring my dad back.
It’s not going to reverse decades of mistreatment and abuse that make me flinch and want to hide.
Food is my drug.
The internet is my escape.
Book shopping is one of the only things that barely lights up the dopamine part of my brain.
I seek out love, but it eludes me. It runs faster than a gazelle, swift as an eagle.
Have you ever seen It’s a Wonderful Life, where he was shown what life would be like if he never existed? He pounds on doors, yells, screams… and no one can see him. No one can hear him. He’s invisible. He doesn’t exist.
And yet people ask me why I’m not smiling.
Because this world requires that your emotions be plastic. The real ones shoved in a hole and locked with a key and smashed into pieces, into oblivion.
Real emotions are forbidden.
Especially at church.
Shiny plastic people.
A theater mask at the masquerade.
No one sees your scars. Your pain is stopped at the door and refused entry.
It doesn’t matter where you are, where you go, your emotions are not welcome there.
And yet you’re expected to survive in a world that doesn’t want you. That can’t, won’t, accept your pain and your fear and your scars. The noise. The brokenness. Nothing less than perfection. Godhood, even. Our world that worships the perfect, the toned, the beauty, the flawless. It’s as if we must become God in order to be accepted.
No pressure.
And this is where I stand…
Curled into a ball. Sobbing. Invisible. Tortured. Broken. Traumatized. Terrorized. Flashbacks. Pain.
All while leading a normal life. Laughing, working, helping, loving. Pretending. Faking. Crying. Screaming. Silently…
And no one sees me. No one hears me. No one.
No one sees me…
Being empathic just makes me wanna tear my flesh apart when reading or listening things like this... I cannot offer neither piece of advice nor comfort cause I am almost certain that you would be taking it as mocking or pretentious and I would hate that... I can only say that I can relate to the point I am able to - that possibly not being even a spec of what you are actually feeling inside... We're all living in a human meat grinder calling it society in which pretending turns from a false second nature to the only way forward... We should just pause at times and try to get a good look around us maybe try spotting out what is going right and what wrong... I know for sure I don't like what I am seeing and having kids has led me to believe that nowadays it's the worst thing I could do to them... Bringing them to this life while not being able to gently guide them to steer away from what they will be expected to act on or act as... Evidently leading to more people feeling bad about their lives while society pushes them out of a "wound" like "bad blood" when the reality is that they are the best thing being a human is nowadays...
Just hope you hold on strong enough to find reason to change your mind or viewpoint on what you are going through...! ♥️
@jesusredeemedme2425
It's uncanny, you know. I've been writing a lot about nothingness lately.
Please take a moment to recognise the beauty of your words. While they tell a tale of woe, you've perfectly expressed what it's like to not just stare into the void, but have it inhabit your soul, your spirit, your heart, your mind, and your body. A complete takeover, a total hollowing out.
I swear I was born into the void. From birth, for 36 years, almost every smile was forced, me just playing the part I thought everyone else was. Describing it as plastic is apt. I recently wrote a poem titled "Plastic". Less animated than a lifeless mannequin, I thought we were meant to feel nothing. I thought we were all playing pretend, just a game.
You are not alone. I have felt less than nothing before. I think it shielded me from the storm. I didn't react to the chaos around me while I was growing up because I couldn't feel.
You're right. Those little bits of advice are hollow themselves. How do you know things will be alright? How will any form of entertainment bring any life to the dead? It's like adding nothing to nothing and expecting something to happen.
I think you know my story well enough now to know some of the paths I walked. And I don't know how I did it, honestly. I didn't want to. I had no willpower. I just followed, trusting blindly.
When nothing strikes, to me, it is a sign that the mind needs to work something out. There is a block. That wonder we feel when we discover something novel and meaningful dies when there's nothing to learn. And we are driven to know.
Everything turned to ashes. Nothing could hold my interest, no game, no movie, no story. For a while, like you, I took comfort in food. I gained weight. I lost muscle. But my tongue was the only thing that seemed to work, and so I felt what I could.
I've hinted that learning might help. At one point, studying gave me shade from the shade. But it wasn't enough. I wanted to go deeper. I wanted to reach into the caverns of my mind, pull out the nothing that was ending everything, and dance upon it.
Like you, I picked up a new tool. I found it long ago, but I didn't realise its potential. I found it in logic and reasoning. But not just the cold kind.
It started cold at first. I began asking questions. What exactly is at the root of my problems? What is causing me difficulty?
It took time. But I refused to let it go. I had to learn about myself in order to guide myself. Eventually, something clicked: I saw myself for who I truly was, what my conditions were. And what I once thought to be weakness turned out to be the source of my creativity.
But I didn't want to stop there. With reason, I found one can navigate the labyrinth, find the path. It became a loop: uncover a truth about myself, and feel more deeply.
When feeling returns, reason evolves. It turns into a paintbrush, and sometimes, if you work it right, there are flecks of new colours.
What you've done here is incredible. You claimed to have no idea where you were going, yet you stole the words right out of my mouth. You say how I feel about the void. And you've done it with such eloquence, such grace, such honesty, it is a work of art. You may not feel it now, but your description of nothing moves me, and I'm sure it is a mirror for other people to see themselves.
I don't think I can force feeling. You seem numb. Even if lightning struck you, it may pass right through you, without you even knowing.
It seems you need to start from scratch. Look at the foundations you are standing on. Do they feel solid? Or is there a deeper truth that can strengthen them?
You don't need to throw everything away. You are good, I like you. You are very expressive for someone who feels numb.
If you start simple, you can rebuild. Don't do it all at once, please. It is a process. And you may find it only takes small adjustments here and there to start feeling again.
I'm always happy to try and process these feelings with you. I'm sure many are. A lot of us are numb.
@jesusredeemedme2425
I still feel it sometimes. Sometimes, everything levels out. And it's that perfect middle that makes me cry. I think: it's a tragedy people feel this way, and so I lose myself in relation, appearing on the other side.
This is my piece, The Seed of Emptiness. I wrote it because that's how I honestly feel. And I hope to God that somewhere in my words, you find a seed of hope.
The flood of my tears, wrenched from my complete forgiveness, fills every well, swells every ocean.
Not an inch of nothing remains. The total absence of absence pulses, the purple electric music of my heart.
To wholly heal is surreal. I could never have thought a feeling could form the foundation of a limitless fountain.
I can't describe the pride that beams when I break at the seams, only to rebound, stronger. The depth of the valley flattens the mountain, allowing me to walk flat ground.
You could be where I am, finding yourself time and time again. Yet it is the extremes, the highs and the lows, that ignite the spark, the craving for difference.
If my mind is lightning, my heart is like a warm fog, flecked with colours unseen. I want to see what I feel so that I can know, because every reason leads me down a labyrinth of questions, a hall of mirrors.
Walk the road, if you wish. But you will leave behind the flowers and the trees of the forest. You can still see them, but at a distance.
A different kind of beauty, where everything is a seed of the tree of life.
Suffering ignites in the grasping heart. The self, a flicker in a storm of fleeting conditions. The instant you see it, the storm dissolves, leaving only the luminous pulse of freedom.
In my freedom, I chose to feel. To cycle between a torrent of sadness and radiating rapture. It encircles the emptiness within, allowing me to pull something from nothing.
Nothing is not the end of creation, but its precondition. In emptiness lies the seed from which everything takes form. It is the blank page upon which reason writes.
If I never felt nothing, I would not write about it. An endless land of imagination, without nothing, I am nothing.
There is no end to reason, but I am free to choose a stopping point at any time.
I still feel invisible. Unwanted. Dealing with audio torture. Even now…
@jesusredeemedme2425
@jesusredeemedme2425
I completely understand you for i have gone throught that for 18 years and now finally i have gathered the strength to stand up and fight no matter what i have to face in the future.
I see and hear you. The path ahead for us is never going to be easy cause we have to fight ourselves, this world and forces unknown.
It seems bleak and God isn't responding, but i just read this promise today and i claim and sgare it with you as your promise from the Almighty himself:
The eternal God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms. He will drive out your enemies before you saying "destroy him!" - Deu 33:27
Keep on holding onto the only one who always loves, always cares, is ever present even when we don't care, Jesus our savior.
May God's loce and peace fill your heart and mind today and forevermore. Amen. GBU!!!
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The emotions are strong tonight… Things I didn’t write about. Things I can’t say. Just… emotions. Struggle. Hurt. Shutting down emotions to keep going. Trauma. Pain…
I’m safe. I’ll be ok. You never have to worry about me being unsafe.
I just need some love… Help me get through this.
@jesusredeemedme2425
You're amazing ❤️ we love you soo much..!! 💕 we both in the same boat rn, you're not alone, sweetie 🌸 we got u 💕
Sending millions of love and embrace ur way 🌼 Hug u closer to my soul 🤗
Love youuu soo much, Kiara 💗 
@Ailuraphilelove8tear9
@jesusredeemedme
@jesusredeemedme2425
We love you 🤍 if i cld be there slapping away all the overwhelming stuff i wld. Hugs if okay– hope youre feeling better since posting this 🫂
Hey Kiara.
I’m here for you as much as I can be.
Focus on the positive, girl. Is there anything that you have to be grateful for?
I know things feel weird and unsteady.
I know you don’t feel like yourself and you don’t even know why.
We both know you will get through this. The feelings will shift. Your mind will be renewed.
You got this, girl. Just hang in there. Just do something easy and relaxing right now if you can, and before you know it, you will feel better.
We all love you!
~Green Lime
Awww thank you! Love you too <3
Grateful for a lot… anxious about a lot.
I apologize if I triggered anyone.
@Jesusredeemedme2425 We see you, and we're all here you kiara 💝 Sending you loads of love and *hugs* ❤️❤️
@jesusredeemedme2425 It's hard, even when we know deep down we'll be alright, when the weight of trauma and hurt come it's lonely and draining.
Sometimes we're strong for a long time, and sometimes the dam just breaks. It doesn't necessarily mean we're falling apart; it just means we're human
I'm glad to hear that you're safe, and you will get through this. But Omgosh it's exhausting!
Sending you light and love ❤️
Maybe wrap yourself in a comfy blanket, have something warm to drink, listen to some comforting music? We might not be there physically but we're all with you in heart and spirit ❤️