I feel it all the time.
Even when you think I’m happy.
Even when I am happier.
Even when I’m with you.
Because it doesn’t discriminate.
It does not care that I have 3 children that I love.
Because it tells me they are better off.
It does not care that there are moments where I don’t want to leave anymore.
Because they are short lived, always shadowed by something darker.
Something real.
As real as a hungry lion chasing an antelope.
Ferociously tearing it apart.
Limb by limb.
Sinking its sharp teeth in with a smirk so sinister is scares the demons inside.
But oh, how it excites them.
And after all this time, I am still just an antelope.
I am the broken, torn apart, scraps of what’s left after everyone is done feeding off of it.
I am the carcass.
The skeletal remains of who I once was.
Or who I could have been but failed to be.
In a different world I would be a lion.
In a perfect world we would all be antelope.
In my world it is always dusk.
Never sunny, never pitch black.
There is enough light for me to know it exists but not enough to see clearly.
It always rains.
Everything is muddy, dirty.
It reeks of wet dog.
When I listen long enough I can hear all the words he said to me.
Over and over.
I can feel the way he hated me.
Over and over.
I crawl, not walk, into a cave.
It is there, alone, with my back against the cold, hard, stone that I close my eyes.
The owl sings outside.
I know that it knows, I am home.
And it is still with me.
Holding me tightly in strong arms.
Never losing its grasp on me.
And that’s why I wake up with salty tear stained cheeks.
And that’s why I hope I don’t.
But somehow I always do.
Wake up.