I sit there, huddled in the dark.
A familiar feeling creeps up on me.
That horrid, dreaded feeling.
Of not really knowing who, or what, I am.
I don’t want it to start again, but I know I have no choice.

Now, I am the illusion I created.
I am strong, in control.
Happy.
But before that, there was nothing.
Emptiness.
And before that, there were monsters.

Monsters, creeping in every crevasse of my soul.
Haunting my every dream and waking moment.
Pulling me from the comforts of reality, into something else.
Something dark and unfamiliar.

When I escaped it all, I was met with numbness.
Numbness that felt everlasting.
People thought I had returned, but I knew there was nothing to return to.
That person, the person they hoped I had become again, was lost in the shadows.
I looked at a photograph of that person, only to realize that he was dead.

Shattered and torn into a thousand pieces, never to be put together again.
Instead he had been reborn, into me.
Into whoever this is.
Into the stranger that can’t put the pieces of his past into the puzzle that makes up his life.
Into the person who can only exist in the present, because the past is just a wilderness of horrors.

Being alive is like being a stranger to myself.
I try to follow my dreams, but my mind and body are drained from a life that is so distant I can barely recall it.
This makes reality seem distant.
Like I am looking into a dream.
But piece by piece, it seems I am putting myself back together.