Labyrinth of The Unseen Self
Elysia Noire
Lately, I recognize that I have returned to the very state I once longed to flee—
a labyrinth of memories I have tried to bury,
corridors lined with fragments of days that feel like ruins of a life I can scarcely claim as mine.
My thoughts accumulate with oppressive weight,
veiling the lucidity I once trusted.
I once possessed the poise to unravel any problem—my own and others’—
Yet now I cannot even discern the first thread of the maze before me.
Speech falters; conversations collapse into uneasy pauses and stammers.
Details that once surfaced effortlessly now elude retrieval,
as though the architecture of memory has been quietly dismantled.
Night grants no reprieve.
The faintest sound ignites a quickened pulse,
breath tightens, body unsettled,
mind incapable of stillness.
When I attempt to give this state a name,
I am dismissed, accused of fabrication,
or silenced before my words can take shape.
They brand me selfish,
Though my existence has been one of unremitting generosity
and an empathy seldom recognized.
I am left to question whether the self I believed in
was only a carefully sustained illusion.
There are hours when the thought of disappearance
slips through the mind’s gates unbidden and remains.
It offers the allure of freedom—
not through triumph or acknowledgment,
but through sheer absence:
a quiet abdication of expectation,
an end to the ceaseless endeavor to matter
to those who never truly looked.
My body betrays the toll:
hands trembling without cause,
a heart hammering its own disquiet,
breath constricting as though the air itself were reluctant.
I recoil from the person I am becoming,
a figure I never imagined inhabiting,
And I wonder if anyone could fathom
the relentless effort of existing
When each day feels like a slow descent
deeper into this labyrinth of vanishing.
Am I the villain of my narrative?
Or merely the shadow they refuse to see?
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