Being tired is no longer just an emotion to me. It's the only constant my mind has ever known and the only stability my heart has ever witnessed. With endless days and swiftly passing nights, sleep is no longer a safe haven. It’s darkness slips over me like smooth silk, lovingly embracing me for a moment’s time before pushing me back into this unforgiving reality I’m forced to call ‘home’. These brief, nightly encounters can be compared to that of a high. Like a meth addict, I’m addicted to short time I can feel this release but, every morning I wake up, I am ripped from this calming ocean of pure obsidian and shoved into a world I never asked to be in. Everyday I’m left begging, pleading, praying on my hands and knees to be left in this world of ebony ecstasy, for just a moment longer. Waiting for the very hour, minute, second I can be enveloped in the nothingness once again, but like the soft kiss of sun on a warm autumn’s dawn, it leaves me just as soon as it had come.

Though, no one would ever know. No one could ever tell. My masks lie so deep upon my face that I cannot even tell where I begin and my pretense ends. My facade has become like a deep-rooted tree in the center of my very being. I do not know who I am and thus, neither does anyone else. I am lost in a maze, wandering amongst the walls I built around my heart to protect myself but in creating this barrier between those around me and who I truly am, I made someone new. I brought forth a new person just to keep myself company in the midst of the scars and concrete. I am so used to utilizing this person separate from who I am that I no longer am aware of who I was, nor who I will continue to be. But no one would be the wiser.

For years I have played this game and every time, I lose. I’ve lost many things to these bets, and yet, I never fold. Lord knows why I continue when I know I can never win but, every day the hand plays on. Like the adrenaline rush that flows to the mind during free-fall and the hard crash that comes after, I crave the pain these poker games with Satan bring for they remind me that, I am real.

These thoughts, accompanied by many others, frolic and fight amongst one another in my mind every passing moment of the day. Constantly conflicted and being torn in half while I adorn the kindest of smiles. It’s written in the pores of my skin, etched into the breaths of my speech and painted in the glaze of my eyes. The pain, the fire, the never-ending battle is doused all over my face yet, continues to go undetected. Over the years I have mastered the ability to go completely unnoticed. I am an expert in presenting everything while reveling nothing and in these presentations, I still learn nothing. I continue to know nothing for I have ‘faked it, made it’ and in doing so, lost it along the way.