Darkness

A girl sits quietly in the dark pondering her worth. Does she have any? Her family doesn’t want her; she was cursed long before she was born by them. The friends she had seem to keep slipping away, each betraying her fragile trust before exiting stage left. The ones who stay inflict new wounds, but they’re all she has.
Alone and frightened, clinging to what few connections she still has even though they wound her deeply. She has no confidence; it shattered long ago. Every time she gets a few pieces of it back together someone comes along to smash into even smaller pieces; soon there will be no repairing it.  
       Doubt haunts her every day. Every conversation, every interaction she has she regrets at night. Fearing that though she tries her damndest to be friendly, interested, and someone who others enjoy interacting with that she fails. She often wants to abruptly stop talking and scurry off during conversation realizing that she must be annoying the other person, but she can’t seem to shut her trap. Human interaction of a positive nature she craves. The loneliness of years past has forced her to seek out more interactions, but being un-liked and unwanted for so long has taken its toll. She is plagued by the hatred she felt in childhood; she can’t imagine anyone who knows her actually likes her. It is pity, she believes, that some are to kind to send her off with a few harsh words, that they will tolerate her occasional presence simply out of pity.
       Among “friends” she feels ashamed. Their remarks pierce her. The judgement she feels cast down upon her when she didn’t perform a certain action that day and her “friend” asks her about it with judgement in her voice. It is not just judgement, but scolding after scolding. Every mistake, every time she forgets even the smallest thing her “friend” is there to point it out. Slowly killing any belief she has in herself. All she can do is hang her head and wait for the scolding and judgement to pass. She feels about an inch tall; no more than a bumbling idiot, who is just merely in the way. A failure and her failure is made all the more apparent by her “friend’s” successes and constant reminders of every last thing she can’t get right.
She desires to run free. To no longer be weighed down by all that plagues her. By there seems to be no escape. To be free would mean to withdraw from everyone and everything; it would mean death. Once upon a time she could have stayed in the shadows, hiding for all her years, but not now. She braved the world and it burned her. Now there’s no way to return to the shadows. Her “friend” would relentlessly lay into her beating her further down until she finally broken. Her “friend” wouldn’t even see that she was driving her down further; she’d be convinced that she was helping.
       Retreating in peace is not an option. Living, thriving all hope of that has been crushed. Peace is all she wants, but peace she cannot have. She wants to be whole, to no longer be wounded and bleeding, to trust and hope without fear. Her fear in humans is strong; she is frightened of asking her “friend” a simple question, because she might get angry at the stupidity of it and reply harshly. She jumps at doors opening fearing that one day it will be the monster, finally come to end her. A slammed door anywhere, even if by accident, sends her heart race as it was one of the monster favorite things to do in a fit of anger. Humans always equal pain. Maybe not at first, but in the end they will hurt her.
      The darkness is closing in. She searches for kindness, something to ignite her faith in humans once again, but none seems to come. Every day her hope flickers threatening to go out, and then darkness will finally take her, claiming her forever.