TheBanyanTree: Story #2-LOST BATTLES; LOST WAR

[Sharon Mack]

 Journal Prompt 

  Wednesday July 28, 2004

  I am capable of what every other human is capable of. This is one of
  the great lessons of war and life. ~Maya Angelou 

  LOST BATTLES; LOST WAR

  The war was in my mind.  The constant battle to stay lucid, to stay
  grounded; to stay "normal" was driving me further and further into
the
  secret places.  I wanted to stop the battle.  I wanted to stop the
  sound.  The sound haunted me, a horrible swinging and singing, an
ever
  present chanting.  A calling to move away, to let myself move upward
and
  outward allowing nothing but the air to touch me, nothing but the
clouds
  to see me, nothing but the sky to hear my cry.  It drew me, it drove
  me...

  And yet no one knew...

  They still came to me one by one.  Making their appointments,
sitting
  in the chair that once was my mother's.  Talking, talking, talking. 
  Telling me their tales of woe and utter despair. Crying the tears
that
  should have been mine. I listened (or so they thought) with a
  superficial air of caring and spouted text book wisdom and they
thought
  they were getting better...and sometimes they stopped coming and no
  longer sat in my mother's chair because they thought they were
  healed...

  And they never knew...

  ...that the demons inside their heads, the demons in their souls had
  lifted themselves onto me and into me, leaving me the sickest of us
  all.