I Just Wish...

I wish I could have just let go.

If it was to leave, I wish it just had left.

Because now it is gone, and all is dark and empty.

Such a little thing, such a very little thing.

It took all of what I had been, and left me with this nothingness. This dark void between reality, and the cold grip that clutches at my soul, that every day drags me deeper and deeper into a blackness I cannot escape. My mind screams in protest, my sanity flees, so nothing is right and all around me is ill and bland. Everything I had ever known becomes distanced and unwanted. The people I cared for seem now too far away, and my slowing heart can no longer comprehend love or kinship anymore. My will withers with each day, because I’ve not the strength to fight the hungry darkness that consumes me.

I lust and yet I cannot be slaked. There is nothing, no return, but a deeper hollow in the cavern of my soul, that just becomes greater and greater, until I feel so empty and lifeless, that the icy wind can blow right through me.

I feel so tired all the time, as if night never leaves me, and lays heavy on my shoulders even while the sun shines bright across the fields and valleys. So tired, and no amount of rest can waken me. My eyes close more and more as time passes, and my desire to keep them open, in order to see what I can never again enjoy, wanes like the moon in the winter time.

What I wish, can never quench my yearnings. I long for It. But It is gone, and now I am doomed – not to live– but to endure what is left of a life devoid of feeling, and full of nothing but misery and pathetic reflection. Remembrance of falling and failure. A life in desire for the Thing that stole mine from me. It’s final spit of vengeance. It was my burden, my forfeit.

Under the influence of that exquisite poison, I slowly wasted away, not knowing that I was turning to a mere shadow of myself, a pale reflection in body and in mind of everything I had been. Things I once knew and loved became ugly and distasteful, and all my yearnings and hungers begged for the only thing I could never have enough of. Like during the grey of an early morning expanded by clouds of rain, the light was buried, though I never knew, for the sun became so foreign to me. My eyes refused to see, blinded by the darkness swirling from that wicked land I so unwillingly (but by my own accord) staggered into, for my legs and body refused to function for anything but the evil that I wore upon my neck, while my failing mind willed them to listen.

That Evil eroded my strength, until it dwindled like to the last drop of water in a river before a drought, leaving me with nothing but the weary resolution to continue with thirst and fatigue gnawing at a body deprived of spirit and soul, plagued with unending torture. This all subject to a person so jaded, and drained of all but nothing.

I longed for more of It, to have It always, though I tried to deny this unquestionable yearning to myself. I never realized, that the tighter of a clutch it gripped on me, the weaker my resolve to hold onto everything else became.

The remnants of anything I had, any love, any hope, any longing, any felicity, are burned to nullity in the fiery stomach of Oroduin. My spirit was diminished in the Cracks of Doom. And now what I live is not a life – but a hopeless shamble, the residual of everything, and of nothing.

Now I feel as if I trudge uphill to nowhere, with shadows as companions. (But shadows they are not – I am the shadow.) Though they do not understand – they could at no time. I cannot walk this path forever. I feel as though I betray them, with my false smiles and happiness. (Happiness... what is that?). Smiles that turn inwards to grimaces, and happiness that becomes some heavy bitterness and unrest.

I feel transparent. Like a ghost wandering the halls of an old life, not able to touch or feel anything but the memories that those anythings bring to me, which provides only pain and more hollowness, a sore want to have life once more. I watch as colors turn to greys, and the sun no longer rises, and greet the new day with wishes that I could stray out of all space and time, and be left to wallow in the in the cold, as I had been in the darkness that had come before it.

Is there no reprieve? No escape? I cannot think of anything more but to spare them all my slow demise. I am not sure of anything any longer. The hands that come to help me, that come to gently lift me from this darkness with kind words, and promises of love and joyfulness, feel as if ripping claws arrived to drag me to a surface which is too bright and stings my eyes. And it pains me to realize, through all the haze and wickedness, that I love and hate the same cruel strangers I had once called my friends.

They do not know how deep this suffering runs, and they think that they can heal me with fresh air (which has turned bitter) and love (which I cannot recognize, but for the memory I have of how I had loved once, and what it meant to feel this way). But I know this is not true. These wounds are too deep to heal, this pain too veritable to ignore, this pining too strong to push aside. They do not know.

They do not know.

I do not know either, how long I can hide this from them – how long I can prevent this hurt from spreading to those I knew I had loved. (How long I can keep this darkness bottled inside, to not taint the recovery of the lives they had once known). I do not know how long it will take to finally possess me fully, for I am trying with everything left of my withered being to prevent this – because if it ever succeeds, and I am gone, it will then prey on them too. Oh, how cruel a thing for love to turn to bane!

My own hand sometimes strays to the hilt of my very sword, fingering, longing, to be able to take the weapon from its sheath, and to end my suffering, my nightmares, my pain, my craving, once and for all. To bid me passage away from this all... so that I might find some comfort in endless slumber if not in solitude. An eternal rest, to land me away from this hapless, hazy void in between living and longing. I try to run from this blatant solution. I am not so cowardly as this. (But in reality, I do not think I could ever do it – I am too weak, too scared, I am not strong enough to be so brave). But should I rather suffer? I think I should rather end by my own hand, than the Shadow’s greedy, evil pull.

No...! These thoughts I try to push away, I try to shove them away, and to will myself to forget I ever harbored such cowardly and brazen musings, but they always return, always tickling the edge of the mind that created them. Always close they are, but somehow also far away, never near enough to reach, haunting my once peaceful dreams, and bringing me shame and comfort.

What would they think? What would they say, if I were to do this?

What will they think? What will they say, if I do not, and let this Shadow take it’s course upon what is left of that which I can call myself?

Will I spare them all greater hurt by giving them great pain first?

The thoughts are so hard to keep. I am confused and lost within myself – myself, which I no longer recognize. The darkness devours everything. Everything but the longing and the wonder.

(There is a call... in the darkness in the back of my mind... eerie and foreboding as a shrill whisper in the cold swift wind of a black mountain pass... I hear it when the blackness is the darkest, calling, a litany of horrible things to come... a sound so horrid.... and rasped.... a deep guttural, throaty noise... That is painfully familiar... and then I know that when I pitied, I was right... I hear it now... and I can barely make out the word, but when I can hear it fully, what is left of anything inside me screams in horror and protest, I hear it now: .... Gol... G– ... Goll... Gollu... Gollum! Gollum!!) I must escape this!

I hear the voices again. The voices of those I loved, coaxing me... asking me... begging... for me to come back, come back to them. Where am I...what... What are they saying?

‘The anniversary is over...’ The voices seem so very far away. 'Weathertop...over... come...back to the light... Frodo... come home.’

Warmth of hands touching mine own penetrate the icy hold over me for just a split second, and for a flash, an instant of time, I am free, and I see the love and hurt and fright in the eyes of my cousins, both staring, both looking to me as if I am lost in a maze I can never find my way out of, as if they shall never see me again. I see Bag End once more as it had been, and my cousins as they once were – carefree, careless. I realize in some distant reach of my mind that I am lying in my bed, and they are leaning over me. And I know I am dooming them to this agony.

I tell myself that this is the Shadow’s doing. It’s way to torment me, letting me see those kin... allowing me to remember what I once had. Then taking it all away once more.

‘This spell will end...come...back to the light...Frodo...please...’ What...is that voice? It sounds so...

And then just as quickly as I had been away, I am back here. Alone in the darkness.

I do not know what shall become of me. And I fear it.

Though I recall one thing so truly, a solid fact and wish amidst this dark haze beclouding me – while I was hanging there, over the edge, above the lake of fire and lava, staring at that hobbit above me...not feeling or knowing who he was, or knowing anything but the pain, the ache, the unquenchable desire that was lit anew as my life, now such a tiny little thing, fell into the fiery pit below me. Only one thought had escaped my unending longing to capture the world as it had been in my hand: I just wish, that I could let go.