It had been a while since I’d ended up here.

Sorrow is both an entity and a room. She is the hand that cuts my mattress in two, that pulls me away from my bed, under and into a place beneath the Universe’s fabric, where the Gods are always watching.

She is the box that traps me inside my thoughts. The lock that seals away my consciousness behind an unmoving door.

Sometimes, Anger, Regret, and Helplessness follow. But they never materialize like her. Like this.

It is dark and it is bright at the same time. My arms are spread out across the floor, like the wings of a dying bird that has just run into a window. I stare at the ceiling—pale, coated in thin strips of gold that seem to move whenever I am not looking. It could be beautiful, but the building is injured. There is a cut, deep into the middle of the rooftop. And the way it has been slashed gives way to the blackness of space. Ever-growing. Bleak and endless.

If I care to observe the darkness long enough, I may see stars, galaxies and a world that I love: but I am stuck here for a reason; whenever Sorrow brings me to this place, all I see is that which escapes me.

Maybe I’m not as strong as I thought I was.

Maybe I am not even strong enough to deal with the burden of existence.

I wonder, sometimes, why it is that I have been given this chance at living. When everything is so difficult. When it is so hard to breathe. Is it a test?

Or a punishment?

The sound of a ticking clock rings through the air.

Click. I need to get a hold of myself.

Click. I need to push her away—Sorrow, the part of me that wants to take the time to feel, and be a human girl again.

Click.

Quickly! I think. They’re all counting on me.

I cannot miss a night.

Quickly, quickly!—I have to get away. “Why won’t you let me leave?” my voice trembles as I ask her the question. She is still holding onto me tightly, as the walls of the room cave in. Everything shatters around my figure like the glass of a worn, old mirror.

I know the Gods are watching, but they won’t help me. Nobody ever does around here. I am tired, of these responsibilities, that I never chose to keep.

“I need to go back,” I tell Sorrow, who doesn’t reply in words, as the room falls to a familiar darkness, that has almost become familiar at this point, like a second home. An itchy sweater, warm, yet uncomfortable all the same.

“Please,” I whisper, as she embraces me, and I rest my head against her shoulder. I know it doesn’t make any sense to return to that place where I am not living for myself, and that I have no reason to try so hard to escape You: but I can’t help it. “Let me return to that old bedroom without a door, in the attic whose scenery is never-changing.”

Please.

My ears ring.

My breaths quicken.

I don’t know why, but— “I want to try again.”