Don't Fear the Darkness

The hospital is rarely quiet at night.
Ghosts of our past drift through the halls,
plaguing our minds as we pretend to sleep
with promises we’re too intimidated to break
and secrets we’re too scared to spill
from a time when we could still remember
what happiness was like.
 
These secrets we harbor
aren’t simply for our own selfish purposes
but to spare our loved ones from the pain
our insanity will undoubtedly evoke.
Beneath my sleeves are a ladder of crimson scars
that compensate for the torment I feel
every time I look in the mirror.
Self-injury prolongs my stay.
Compliance expedites discharge.
But disobedience is easy when nobody notices
that I haven’t touched my pasta or the slice of pie
my fellow inmates devour like pigs
on an Animal Farm.
 
I should discuss this with my doctor
but sometimes it’s easier to fly under the radar
and let the kids with the real problems do the talking.
Victor witnessed his brother’s death;
two bullets, straight to the chest during a drug deal.
“Stay in school, kids,” he says.
Seventeen-year-old Donna has a baby on the way
but she doesn’t want to be a mother
if it means losing everything she cares about
and everyone.
Johnny’s schizophrenia has imprisoned him in a fantasy land
of tangerine trees and marmalade skies
for God-knows how long—perhaps forever.
I wonder if it is possible to lose your mind
when you weren’t given a proper one to start with.
 
A realization dawns on me as I absorb their tragic tales
and I begin to appreciate my good fortune
after spending my childhood foolishly believing
that success doesn’t come with hard work
but on a silver platter of the opportunity I was handed.
Now my illness is trying to seize that prosperity
by releasing an army of merciless demons
who refuse to restore the joy in my life
that was taken from me long ago.
 
So I’ll have to try harder.
 
The setting sun outside my window
is overshadowed by a cloak of darkness
as night takes precedent.
Maybe this time, I’ll be strong enough
to ignore the ghosts that haunt these halls
and rely instead on my doctor’s pretty pills
to soothe me to sleep.
Because I know when morning comes,
I’ll have to start all over again.