Time passes like it always does. But, this time here is different. This time I am alone. Alone, I have never been this alone before. It is not that sense of loneliness one gets when surrounded by people but no one who knows you. This is the loneliness that aches to one's inner soul. The kind one feels when their heart has been ripped away by a sudden loss. The loss an orphan, a widow, or mother of a miscarried child may feel. This is just one of the ways to create this darkness I feel.

Others are infected by horrible pasts, nightmares that haunt them. Yet others still opened the door to the darkness unaware of having done it, due to personal fears and self loathing. No matter how we came to be aquainted with it. We all suffer now within its chains. It is like one's own personal rain cloud or black cloak. You must take it everywhere with you. No matter how bright the weather or how pleasant the company, that blackness simply wraps itself around you snuggly. It does not allow that brightness to touch your heart or soul. You see, this darkness is absolute. And, what is worse, is that it is a secret, invisible.

There may be a few, thank the stars in the heavens, or perhaps at least one who knows the gravity of your pain. If you are lucky enough to have these beacons of hope and understanding, then they will become the lighthouse to which you can look when the shore is all but gone. They see, or at least glimpse, the shroud which ensnares you. They are the ones that stop you from allowing the darkness to swallow you whole and drag you beneath the waves that are always looming, threatening to crash down upon you at any moment. But, despite these few supports, the lonely darkness does not relent. It does not relinquish its hold. Each of us must withstand the song the blackness sings, the lullaby of the abyss. It offers an end to the suffering, if we but accept it.

But we must soldier on. Some do fall to the crushing weight and sickly sweet entreaty of the night. But the rest, we try to resist. We learn to live with the darkness, fight to keep it at bay. Some, I have heard rumored, find a way to overcome and abolish it. Those who find the light again and shed the dark cloak. Their stories are but whispers of hope which the darkness tries to discredit. But, for now, we plagued souls take comfort in these whispered legends. We use whatever we can to keep the night from winning. We live on to fight and to, perhaps, even hope or dream of the break of day.