When the Sun Wilts a Flower of the Moon

            She stands in her empty room. It is silent, at least in her mind. It doesn’t matter if there’s noise all around her; shouting, yelling, screaming, cursing, crying, or if the sound is falling out of her mouth; it’s not like she’ll remember later. It’s the silence that expands in her mind and suffocates all other thoughts, all other memories. Silence. No words. No faces. No shadows cast by a rising or setting sun. Silence. And it means everything. It’s the beginning of the long fall. It’s the start of the strenuous climb. It’s the end.
            She holds the last of her things—everything else is gone, the bed has been stripped of sheets and blankets and the dresser drawers are shut tight from a lack of contents—and, for a moment, she contemplates setting them down and leaving them, even if simply out of smite. Dare them to forget her. But she knows her stuff won’t stay. It’ll be shipped away to her new residence or tossed in a bag and sent off to the dump. If it’s the first rather than the latter, there will be no words, least of all an apology or even a better lie for an explanation. There will be nothing for her to hold on to and she’ll be left alone with the night demons and the depressive, repulsive voices, and the voice she created to keep herself sane. The real question is, does it work?
            The second option symbolizes her place and even thinking about it hurts.
            When she’s settled in her new room in her new house—in her new home—she’s uneasy. The walls are slowly collapsing in. The furniture is not hers. The bed squeaks, creaks, talks to her and she knows it’ll be mean to her in her dreams. That’s just how things work. The desk is envious of the dresser and the tension is a spider stalking across its web towards the watching but. She stands alone with her things piled and crammed onto things that don’t belong to her and have been marked and claimed by others, and she wonders if it all really is her fault. Did she simply make the wrong choices and refused to see the error of her ways. It probably is. She’s never done anything right.
            She leaves the room and goes to the main parts of the house. She realizes how far away she is from the other occupants. Shut off and hidden away. Is she being punished here too? She must have been wrong. Good choices, right choices, don’t lead to bad situations. Right? A smile when people come by and she settles in next to them. She’s afraid of what a more severe punishment would entail. She’s a guest and she will obey all rules, less this become the end. Again.
            And the punishment never seems to end. It follows her, constantly, everywhere she goes. Condemning faces in the grocery store. Condemning faces that seem to appear on every corner, in every building, on every person. She hates school. The air is toxic and breathes of prison. The halls crowd with the unwilling. The rooms taste of despair. The voices of the students are mimicked by the voices in her head and when she’s there, if she lets the barrier she created down for even a moment, her mind is suffocated with noise and she can’t think. She can barely breathe. When she’s in the halls, with the walls too close and narrow and the sounds too loud and echoing, she feels like she’s being washed away.
            Death is a constant option. As long as there’s life, death lingers on the side and anything and everything can end in death. Its darkness is bright on the horizon. Its cold embrace warms the veins. It’s a best friend always there. It’s almost beautiful.
            It was when the only person that seems to get her turned away that she finally broke. The bottle was there, in her room—her old room, the one long since gone—and its contents beckoned and called to her. The thought was there, in her mind, like it had been many times before. That’s why the bottle sat in her room, waiting. It knew the day would come when she would be broken. One after another, she consumed the contents of the bottle, but she can’t. She realized that she doesn’t want to die. She’s not ready. Not yet.
            It’s true that her overall mental health diminished upon entrance of the residence, to no error of the residents. She wants to go back, return, but she knows that nothing will ever be the same. She will never be the same.
            She can’t stop the voices that she hears, or thinks with, in her head. This is because she is crazy. The voices aren’t real and she knows this, but she can’t help but engage some of them in conversation. She knows she shouldn’t, but they won’t leave her alone anyway and it gives her something to do. One, though, is particularly demanding of attention and she likes to bounce ideas off of him. She decides he is a him because he tells her so. He’s different than the others. He’s loud, but sweet and is never mean and the other voices find him obnoxious. They’re very clear about their feelings. They want to get rid of him, try to convince her to delete him like she could never do to them, but in there, somewhere lost in the darkness that is her mind, he’s her only friend. He promises he’ll always be there for her, because that’s what friends do.
            She talks about him because she is crazy after all and crazy people don’t need a reason to talk about people who don’t really exist. They—the people she’s forced to see, partially by her own free will—find this unhealthy. They give her pills and tell her to stop being crazy. It’s that easy after all. If they tell her to stop and she thinks she is, she has to stop. Right?
            She stops talking about him. She stops talking to him. Both to please them and to prove to herself that she’s fine. She can’t stop hearing him though. He’s in there, somewhere, calling her name in that voice that’s not much deeper than her own and trying to tell her stories. She ignores him. She pretends he isn’t there. She doesn’t want to be crazy. She wants to be normal, like everyone else.
            If only it was that easy.
            In the end she stops taking the pills. They hurt her head. The voices don’t go away, only grow louder. They drown him out now. Sometimes she’s convinced that the voices are really in the pills and telling her to take them is a murder attempt. Thoughts like these prove she’s crazy. She’s crazy. Insane. Psychotic. A lunatic. Potentially harmful to herself and others. One day, she knows, she’ll be locked away.
            And she is.
            In more ways than just one.
            She’s at her worse when it’s night. She’s vulnerable then. Sleep can be more harmful than helpful. It can bring back memories in the form of a dream and after a while she can’t tell them apart. She remembers what she never wanted to, what she spent so much time and energy trying to forget and it hurts. But, the thing is, the memory is wrong. It lies to hide the truth because it’s a truth she still doesn’t want to know and she doubts she ever will. Some things are better left forgotten. Or does memory have no idea at what it’s doing and that’s why the colors are always wrong and the names don’t belong with the correct face? And when she learns of more details, of things that influence the memory, she holds the fear tight in her chest until the pain is near unbearable. What she does remember, as complete as it’ll probably be, she refuses to speak of. She doesn’t want to acknowledge it further and doesn’t know what words are acceptable to use. She’s very good at that, not talking about things that maybe should be talked about. It’s almost a talent, a truly refined skill. An undocumented world record. It’s something that she can’t seem to stop.
            And honestly, what can she say? Words can’t and won’t ever change the past. The memory is fragmented and filled with false images. The blame has been shifted away. Is it right to put it back where it originated? And what if the accusation is wrong? What then? Is it better to remain silent than damage the remains? She chooses her friend and enemy, silence. There’s no way she could handle another loss.
            He begins to fade away, the friend in her head. At first she’s sad and desperate to bring him back. He’s all she has left. The other voices are gone. She needs the conversation. She needs the friendship. She needs the no secrets. She needs him. But there’s nothing she can do and she gives up. And then he is gone. And when the memory of that voice that wasn’t much deeper than her own begins to fade and break into fragments it rips her soul asunder. And it drags her down to her knees and sends her back into a mind echoing with the dreaded silence. And it forces her to begin the long process of completion.
            A realization is found. It’s unwanted and hurtful. She’s a liar. She doesn’t mean to be, but she is. It’s as if she can’t help herself and wonders if everyone else already knows. They have to. She’s a liar and nothing adds up right. Or are they truths that she can’t quite remember and the blanks filled in with forced logic. The important details are blurry. She doesn’t know what that means, for herself or anyone else, but she tries to stop lying. She’s tired of holding on to lies. Truth is steady and constant. Lie enough and it becomes true. Lie enough and the real truth is forgotten.
            The past returns, startlingly and unexpected and she has mixed feelings about the desire. Still, she allows a bridge to be built. It’s shaky and precarious, but it’s the only bridge she has and she grips it tight. She’s terrified of what will happen if it breaks. She sits in her room, the one painted her favorite color—once a mark of love—but it’s not her room. It doesn’t smell like her anymore. Perhaps it was never her room. There was no apology. An “I’m sorry” or “I was wrong” is too much to ask for. She knows that and she doesn’t expect it to ever come. A constant reminder of why is all she’s given. She sweeps the pain under the rug and shrugs it off. She would rather have a fragmented relationship and hidden pain than feeling like she actually means something. It doesn’t need to change now; she’s used to being last.
            The room was given away just like she was.
            Sometimes she sees the bottle sitting on the windowsill, though it was removed that night. Sometimes she sees the tiny TV that was given to her years ago sitting on a stand that broke years ago. Sometimes she smells alcohol and dirty dishes and garbage. Sometimes, when she remembers the past, she wonders how it could have been, what it could—would—have been like had she just been what they wanted.
            But she knows she’ll never be what they wanted. She went left when they went right. They wanted her to believe what they believe, to act how they act, to be what they are, but she can’t. She’s not who they are. She knows that, even if she barely knows who or what she is. Her heart tells her she can’t do or say the things they say. Her god is not their god. Her god is not her friends’ god, if they even have a god. Her god is not supported or endorsed and never says a word to the world, only to her. Is this because she listens? Or is she only crazy, like she used to be. Like the world wants her to believe.
            But she won’t believe. Not anymore. She has come to learn that she wasn’t wrong, they were. She didn’t do anything wrong. She’s different, and some people might say she’s crazy in the head and some people might say that she needs to be fixed or cured or punished, but she’s not one of those people. And she’s the only one who really counts when it comes down to her.
            Still, she feels these periods of wrong and nothing, absolutely nothing, makes her feel better. The feeling—sorrow, pain, insecurity—is crushing. She lives better, breathes better, thinks better, when her mind is not hers. When it’s his. When the voice in her head that she claims as hers changes to being not much deeper than her own. But he is no better than she because she is neither and both. All she has is proof that she is an abnormality. It would be easier if she was the only one—she could pass as normal and the world wouldn’t be able to single her out—but he is stronger and she can’t erase him. When she does, attempts at least, it hurts her more. And she’s tired of hurting.
            She’s tired of lying.
            But it’s not a lie if it’s the truth and she is he and he is she and they are each other.
            And he wonders if her friends already know and the truth he refused to accept for years was only blocked to her. He doesn’t want them to know. She doesn’t want them to change. Friends are worth more to her than being true to himself. She has never believed that she can have both.
            If only she could, what would he be like then?
            And he’s terrified of losing all that she has left.