Chapter 4 || All I Ask

I take deep, drawn out breaths, in some attempt to ease my raging nerves. Lightly tracing my fingers nervously across my thigh, back and forth countless times with shaking hands while standing in the doorway of the long forgotten room. The cement peeling, and the ceiling dripping. I drop my hands to my sides with a subtle breath. Eventually I am able to conjure up the nerve to let myself find my way to the familiar, aged, thin, wooden seat that was placed delicately in front of the only element that had kept me going for so long. I sit on the edge, slightly dipping my head and relaxing my hands with a shaky sigh.

I want you to find things that keep you calm

Okay. I can do this.

Slowly. Starting slowly, I let my still shaking fingers hover carefully over the melodic keys, closing my eyes and seeping into this feeling I've missed. Grazing my palms over the edge of the stained wood, I press down ever so delicately to create a sound only I've known. I don't dare to open my eyes, gliding my hands across the old instrument and bask in the peaceful melody I had deprived myself of so selfishly. This feeling has no comparison. Not even the growing and burning urge I feel inside of me everyday to destroy the things that I love, the urge that has slowly driven everyone away from me, can compare. The sound allocates it's movement with me, each part of my existence experience a different emotion. I find myself moving in sync with this feeling. This harmony. I've always wanted an escape... how could I leave this for so long?

Even after everything this familiar has given me, after all I could've done with the emotion it instills in me so carelessly, I still cannot partake in something that manages to leave me so delicate. I long for an escape from reality, not for something that will make me even more painfully aware of it. A warmth stings behind my eyes as I bask in what I know I will likely never know again. My vision grows blurry so I keep my eyes closed, salty liquid staining the perfectly white keys. I wanted to stop, I needed to stop feeling but the sound had already kept me transfixed for too long.

I needed to stop the thoughts, stop the chaos, stop the memories, and eventually,

I broke.

...

to break-

crush the emotional strength, spirit, or resistance of.

There are many different ways to perceive something with such a vague definition. You cannot take these simple words by example for something so grand and complex. If one had no emotional strength, spirit, nor resistance, weren't they already broken? What is the point where one can realize that their will has been drained of it's life entirely? When will one understand- when will I understand, when to stop?

When will these innocently decorated thoughts be enough to keep my feet gravitated? When will the soul of this sound, this melody be enough to keep me here? When will the light that has become so easy to claim be visible behind my storm?

She told me once that a desire and a necessity is a controversy in itself. That wanting and needing something are different things. As I lay on the cold and unforgiving floor I wonder, when was it that my mind began to fog over the line between the two? There is an answer for everything she told me. The world is a puzzle for you to solve, and not all of the pieces are in plain sight. But that, that is what makes in worth living.