Clover hearted

Treehouse in the forest

TW: hallucinations, death, fearful and depressing themes

A chapter written during a troublesome time when writing felt like a sanctuary.

Antipsychotic medication

I walk through the cold dark night trying to find something to hold.

I can hear his voice telling me about what he'll do when he finds me.

My breath is panicked and labored, hot tears are streaming down my face.

I stare at my shoes taking slow steps so as to not make a sound.

I hear him berating me, I see him standing in different places.

I stand in front of the nurses office, something within me knows these perceptions are false.

I stare, I talk incoherently, I talk normally, I'm given four white pills.

I walk back slowly, flinching at every stick that cracks beneath my feet, I try to be as quiet as possible.

I hear voices telling me not to move when the wind is blowing, I hear voices telling me not to make a sound, I hear voices luring me to him in unsettling ways.

I ramble to two beautiful people I've never met. I walk back to my room. Things are quiet now.

What I am

I'm looking for something to make me feel like myself again, a phrase that rings like a key to any locked door ahead.

I'm overwhelmed by fear with shaking hands and hot tears. I'm near dead, not quite awake yet, unable to feel the joy I knew before.

I feel distant from the person I was when I felt like myself.

The forest

I have been lost in the forest in a thick fog I cannot walk away from, trees covering any semblance of sunlight.

Maybe this is where I live, maybe I have never been here before, regardless I do not recognize it.

I look above me and around me, I see trees with gray bark and dark green leaves, many of them dead, not that I can tell the difference.

The ground sinks beneath my feet, the dirt caking my shoes, I'm scared to make a sound.

I am trying to escape something or someone although I am unsure of what beast I am running fr5om.

I can't see in front of me, the fog is thicker than blood, I wish I could see my hands but I don't think I really want to.

Graves in strange places. Graves with names I can't read. Graves of people who died here. Graves with my names on them.

I stare at the grave with one of my names on it, I make loud eye contact with my headstone. It's surrounded by grass aside from a fresh patch of dirt that is just me-shaped.

I lay in the dirt, I feel myself bleeding and becoming hollow. The dirt is cold and comforting.

I close my eyes, this is the end, in the great equation of all I am this is where I cease to be. It's quiet now.

I watch as my body stands and brushes the dirt off of me. I watch my body stumble away from my headstone. I watch my body try to find its way out of the forest.

I return to my skin in a haze, I am sitting on the stump of a tree that once was. I feel the warmth of the sun, I see glimpses of orange sunlight trying to hold me.

Meadow

I stood in the meadow feeling a sense of happiness I never deemed myself capable of.

There's hundreds of people to be, places to go, and things to do. I existed in a way I was proud of.

Sometimes I would plant my feet in the middle of a busy moment and look towards the sun with my eyes closed gently, I would bask in it.

I thank the sun with the people here with me, I thank the sun for the hundred little things I hold close to my heart, I thank the sun for stacks of books and diaries.

In a moment of delirium I walked back into the woods.

It was a kind of cold that chills every inch of you, the kind of fog that distorts all you can see, the kind of mud that never really leaves your shoes, the kind of forest that lives in endless decay.

I stayed in the rot, a suffocating kind of comfort.

I told myself I'd stay here until I crawled my way into an unmarked grave.

I watched my body become littered with bruises, I watched my body become pale and lifeless, I watched my body remain entirely still for days, I watched my body stumble out of the woods looking for the sun.