The gaping openness of the night is too much… often more than I can bear. Every thought spins like a saw blade inside my skull. Each wish pummels me with its impossibility. Each memory coats me in a thick layer of melancholy.

My heart lurches, doing it’s best to beat back the hollow emptiness. But it only echoes my despair, calling the nightmare to mimic all of my fears, in perfect, little horror movies that play behind my eyes.

I push myself constantly. If I were just a little better, a little more, a little extra… maybe I’d be enough. Enough to wash away the malaise.

But every high is followed by an aching low. Each wondrous moment where I believe in myself, in love, in family, in my world… Each one is drowned by an equal moment of doubt, longing, and sadness.

In the night, when I am the most alone… desperate for sleep but fearful of what awaits me there… fighting those wicked demons alone… I hope for things no one should hope for.

I wish for the impossible, but know I’ll never see it. I beg my dreams to cooperate, and let me just be content.

But the darkness has it’s own agenda. And it is often monstrous in its efforts to defeat me.

But then… the sun rises on a new day. The blackness lifts as the light fills me to the brim with hope and recovered will.

I know the world doesn’t really harbor secret messages that are just for me, that those are childish thoughts, remnants of my little being left all alone for too long…

But the magic in those moments, where I believe things are just for me or that a story indeed had some glimmering hidden meaning meant only for my heart…

That magic is mine alone.

So, tonight, when my beautiful sun sets, my lovely family sleeps, and darkness begins to beat on me again, I will find solace in magic. I will find hope instead of despair, and I will fight back against the night.

By embracing it. I will love it, in order to coax the fear from it…

When darkness falls, I will force that awful monster to see those hidden notes and I will use it’s mocking to make me strong.

Instead of allowing it to convince me of my worthlessness, I will use that magic to convince IT of my pulchritude.

I will be the fire, in the dark.

And if I ever succeed, and stop listening to the voice in my head who is not the real me…

The darkness will never hurt me again. And instead, I will heal it. I will make it brighter.