Insanity

If I dig too hard,

I fear the madness that lies on the other side.

For what is beyond closed doors

Is not unknown to me;

Rather, I am intimately familiar with the shadows lurking in my mind.

I catch glimpses of them in the panes of my soul,

Darkness and depravity

Watching.

Waiting.

For as much as I know them, they too know me.

They know how I think, how I feel,

How curiosity bids me to seek out places better left untouched.

My morbid desires to destroy myself,

To disappear to the unknown, lost.

"Stay, stay with us," my friends insist.

"Don't leave us," my family demands.

I obey, a puppet to the expectations of others.

Yet still I linger on the brink,

Longing for the day where I can cut loose my strings

And detach from reality,

Never to return.

For it is surely madness that fuels such desperate yearning.

And I am terrified of opening those gates,

Of letting my demons drive me to the depths of insanity,

Where I cannot recognize right and wrong, up and down.

Where I failed to become free,

Forever a slave, even in my last moments.