The figure that stared back at me was everything I’d come to hate, in a face I’d learned to love.  I splashed my face again with the freezing water, intensely staring at the eyes in the mirror, looking for a moment of clarity, a vision of truth – trying to back myself into a corner and make that figure crumble.  I could finally be the victor, if only someone could tell me what to do.  I forcefully broke the stare, and I got on with my day; pushing the moment to the back of my mind.  Chalk up another victory for the reflection.

Mornings were never my forte.  Mornings, and drunken nights when the lights go out. It’s when reality slams my face into an ice wall and picks up my shattered body, carefully rearranging it; Covering the bruises, silencing the sobbing and cleaning up the blood.  All nice and respectable, like.  I wish it would let me drown in my pain.  I wish that it wouldn’t torture me like this; cleaning me up just to beat on me again, like a battered wife.  But that’s reality for you, usually less than pleasant, and altogether far too businesslike.  Who am I to argue?

The depression is a whole lot better now, though you probably wouldn’t know it.  Now I suffer its hangover.  The sweetness of the isolation and pain is gone, and I’m left with an empty shell of myself, with nothing left to hide behind.  No youth, no poverty; no talent.  Pure, naked honesty.  I’m left yearning for the days of selfish seclusion from the world & self sufficiency.  It was reliable, like a clock.  Now I don’t know what to expect, more reality I guess.  More uncertainty.  More pain without a cloak; everyday pain that everyone suffers.  Suffering that means nothing.  Reality, I guess.