HeatMarie

Fill my mind with darkness. No, not the one with monsters, the one with utter black nothingness. For that is better than being alone, feeling like a pest, a charity case; feeling as if no one would ever notice that I was not there. So here I am, sitting in the middle of the dense woods with the glow of my phone, lighting the piece of paper I scribble on. I’m searching for radio silence while begging for someone to scream my name into a megaphone. See, I thought, I think… I do believe that sitting here, by myself, in the dark, with barely a star in the sky, will allow me to escape my mind. Yet it yells, “No one will come searching for you, no one noticed you leave. Go ahead, jump in the lake, forget how to swim; sit here in the beastly cold until you freeze to death.”

Little does the monster know at 56 degrees it’s not cold enough to die from freezing. 

 I laughed out loud as I wrote the last words. A little sick, deranged, but that was where my thoughts were. A mind is a funny place, contradicting in every way, and mine only exacerbates that notion.

As the breeze swept over the leaves, touching them with only the gentlest hand, I listened. I hated it. I wanted hate, anger, disappointment, ruthfulness; I wanted a storm that blew the damn forest down.

It was the last night of a three-day hiking trip with friends. In no way was I excluded, but there I was putting myself alone in the woods, all because I had a fear of being unwanted. I sat there hoping that someone would notice I was gone. But every fiber of me believed, almost knowingly, that no one would. My heart ripped apart at the thought. Anxiety flushed my skin before it sent my heart racing and the world spinning around me. 

 I laid my head on the rocky dirt ground, closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and silenced the monster inside of my head while searching for a way to escape it. 

Turning my gaze up to the sky, I watched the stars as they twinkled above me, and in my head made them tell me a story of two distant lovers who would have given their last light to be close to one another. They spent years upon years doing everything they could to find a way back to their long-lost love. That was the first promise they made before the vast darkness of the universe forced them apart. They promised that no matter what, they would always search for a way back home.

Their constant desire and need to find each other exhausted them to the point that their lights dimmed. Knowing that the other was always searching for their light forced them to do all that they knew how to do, they burned, their light burned so brightly that it could be seen light-years away and every time they blinked they called their lover’s name, hoping and praying that they were heard.

The pulling from the worlds was nothing more than a constant reminder that their life’s only duty was to be somebody else’s light, feeding someone else’s soul with hopes and dreams. Yes, they wished very much that they could feel even the slightest bit of hope. But knowing that their existence was for nothing more than to be a present in a sky that very few creatures appreciated left them questioning if they were really ever seen. After all, there were millions of others out there just like them. 

Their fires burned hotter as their lives came closer to the end. Their deaths excited them because it was on that day that they would fulfill their final promise they made to each other: to fall out of the sky, and bury their light into the darkness of ashes with the hope that one day something so small would carry them away to a place where they could be together again. Perhaps then they would create their own small galaxy. 

“What are you doing out here all alone?”

 His voice startled me, making me sit up straight and turn around to look up at him. I calmed myself before turning my head back to the stars.

“Oh, you know, doing that whole thing where you look up at the stars and contemplate life. They are really pretty out here.” 

“They are. You know the group is about to start the hike. Supposedly, you get a better view of the stars from the mountain.” 

“Yeah, I know, I’d rather just stay here. Less work and I can see the stars just fine.” I waited to hear him say, “Okay,” followed by the sound of the crunching leaves as he walked away from me, signifying that he was never coming back and once again I would be left on my own. 

The crunching of leaves came, but instead of hearing the footsteps fade into the darkness, he walked right up to me and sat down. “You know, you’re right. This is less work.” 

We sat, talking mostly about the places we had been and where we would like to go. I looked down at my phone and checked the time. In exactly five minutes, the hike would start. “You can go if you want to,” I said. I wanted him to stay, I wanted to beg him not to leave. But I have this problem of wanting and needing attention while at the same time pushing away any person who dares to get close to me. 

“I could,” he said, “but I like it here better.” I could do nothing but smile as every last bad thought buried themselves into the darkness that I had begged for. And for the first time in a long time, I finally felt at home, and no longer was I alone.