Maybe. Maybe Not.

It's the seemingly harmless things that will nab you. It's not the lingering memoirs of what had happened in the past, but the swift glint of what is happening to you. It's that savage, desolating, tormenting thing that keeps afloat in the atmosphere; much like how JK Rowling described dementors, a soul-sucking demon that keeps wandering within your perimeters. Waiting until you are unconsciously vulnerable so it can graze your wound, waiting for that chance to give you that kiss of spiritual death. You don't want to, but you will get a waft of your denied reality thru meaningless statements and senseless claims. You feel like it has the capability to throw you hard until you smash your face down the floor, keep you held down, until you convince yourself that it is your new utopia. It lets you settle for second best, and just for the sake of feeling something you console yourself, believing the worst is over. And the moment you do, things will just get worse.

You're not sulking in the stream of denial. You have accepted it, but you refuse to stay drowned. Yet that thing wants to shatter what's left of you. It wants to drift you far away from your new-found seventh heaven, leading you to the prison with locks made from your afflicting sadness, whose guards are your unconquered fears. You just want to get away, but you can't. You simply can't. You start kneeling down, sit on one corner, idle. The next thing you knew, you just hit rock bottom and you can't get back up again because something's pulling you farther down, if that's even possible.

Or so you thought.

That thing does not have the power to hold you, nonetheless pull you down. It didn't drag you to the rock bottom. That's simply the place where you hid, thinking there's no other way but down that black hole. It may come in constant flashes, may keep you struggling to stand back up, but it can never hold you down. You are holding yourself down.

This bedrock is a place we've created for our coward, little selves when we get tired of fighting. We subconsciously make it up because we secretly want to be saved, we want redemption. We fall apart not because things are tearing us apart, but because we are always trying to demoralize ourselves. Guilty of the same strange ways, I guess I just enjoyed the thought of being able to bounce back up all in one piece. And once you abandon that sickening place, that thing you once thought strangled you will be contained inside your clenched fist. You will use it as the key to what's locking you down, and see it burst into flames shortly after. It will never be seen ever again, but you may hear its nonexistent footsteps everytime you feel the need for redemption. But there will be no chains, no locks, and no prison. Just the slight burn it caused you when it burst, but it will not hurt. But what if apparently, that hurt is the only thing that's holding you up? That without it, you'll just sink into non-existence?

Maybe pain is a lie; we say we're hurt when we get tired of the battle. Maybe it's what's left to account all the bullshit for. But then again, what if it's not?