Vent Book

Shadows

You know, shadows are a strange thing. They require light to exist, yet they're also a marked absence of light. Our souls are the same way too, some say. There's you, the good, redeemable likeable part of you. The part that enjoys the sun, laughing with friends over a good inside joke. Being creative and doing whatever small things define and set you apart from the rest. The part of you that you wish everyone would see whenever you've fucked up badly enough.

Then there's your shadow. Buried within you. The darker, more base impulses. Your collected trauma you carry with you as you travel through life. It's dark, cold, and utterly malicious. You feel it stalk through your mind every so often. Each time it does, that small part of fear creeps forward as you ponder the dark thoughts running like a sluggish current through your head.

Noting with almost clinical detachment the terrible things you could do in that instant. Yet just like that, they're gone. Nothing more than smoke. You almost have to think about them to realize they were there to begin with.

Or the times at night when you're just ready to sleep, and suddenly you feel your shadow bring all of its attention to bear. Twisting and corrupting your half conscious thoughts into the darkest parts of yourself. The choking feeling every time you go to therapy and have to confront it. Sitting there with it out in the open, as it seems to leer at you from its seat next to you on the couch.

How it's all you can do to stand still and not run from the sheer violence arrayed against you. Yet you set your spine, face it down and start to fight all the same. You leave the office not having won, but feeling a bit more confident the next time that you'll get him to budge a little. And hopefully, given enough time, you can dislodge and destroy him, and finally work on repairing the many cracks and chips in your soul without him in the way occupying the deepest parts of the trauma you intend to fix.

He is you, and you are him. Two sides of the same coin, yet vastly different. Although without him, you wouldn't be yourself. And without you, he wouldn't have a purpose.

Life fucking sucks like that sometimes, doesn't it?