Quieting her mind.

She’s trying her hardest to separate her past from her future. She’s trying her best to tell her screaming mind to quiet down and to stop pushing forth various damaging scenarios based solely on past experiences.  The past does not dictate the future. Voices at war in her mind argue about whether to trust the love lessons she has learned or to brush them aside to take another chance. A chance she hasn’t allowed herself to take since before she moved to New York. A chance that would equate to jumping from the roof of a burning building with no parachute and hoping to land intact on the sidewalk below. She is currently hanging from the building by two fingers.

 

Amongst the voices, several constant repetitive words can be heard more often than not, much like the clicking of a metronome on a piano. Stop. Stop. Be. Careful. Stop. Back. Up. Stop. Stop.  Left to her own devices, these sounds reverberate around her head playing tricks on her psyche. Ideas and scenes distort to fit an increasingly jaded mind still struggling to place the current situation in an orderly and easily digestible box.  Her mind intends to place this box, in its entirety, into a black or white room. Unfortunately, its location in a grey area on the floor is currently causing indigestion.

 

Voices, much like characters created over time, step from the shadows to share their learned knowledge and pose various questions. Haven’t you learned your lesson yet? Why are you ignoring me? Don’t you remember what happened last time? Don’t you remember what this feels like? Why don’t you trust me? Didn’t boy one and two and three teach you not to do this?

 

The lone voice of hope stands up to counter each question presented by the opposition.  What if he speaks the truth?  What if he is different? What if he doesn’t hurt her? What if this isn’t the same as every other time?


A brief but relieving breeze of calmness blows over the chaos in her head from time to time, easing the struggle hidden behind her hazel eyes.  Her heart resolves to ignore the howling creations from her past. She lets her remaining two fingers slip from the concrete edge and she feels herself free falling through the air at increasing speeds.  Wind flies through her brown hair as she tumbles towards the ground. Visions of dreams she seldom admits to having begin to flash through her mind. How she will land still remains unclear…