Insane

It brings me no surprise that most men are allured with madness. They be but mortals. Sure, an occasional dip into its waters may be considered healthy. It should even be encouraged, I believe. But be careful with your dance with madness. Be sure to moor yourself in the banks, for it just might bring you your undoing.

Madness is a pill. An escape to all things worldly and a cure for all your worries. Coated with a sweet tinge of calmness and beauty, and enticing you with its placidity.

Peaceful and silent, there is no greater bliss.

But as you go deeper: slowly descending, just as serenity is starting to embrace, you will feel a slight tingle. An ominous feeling like ice running through your spine.

Inch by inch it ascends. Not abrupt, but gradual. Slowly taking its time, eating away pieces of your sanity, until it eventually entwines you completely.

You start to grow wary, as calmness becomes agitation, beauty transforms to horror, and placidity to chaos. You try to look up, struggling to swim away, and go back to the familiar cradles of sanity. But there is no light. You've fallen so deep you barely recognise the surface.

You can no longer distinguish up from down. You are lost.

You eventually give in as gravity pulls you under. Deeper. Dark and looming. Sinister.

Then deeper still.

In its core, a raging storm resonates. A fierce malevolence sucks you in as your being starts to implode. It takes over you like a violent revolution until you are yourself no longer. Bit by bit you are torn asunder and then you are nothing. A decrepit. A mere shadow of what once was. A shell. Forever lost.

Be careful with your dance with madness, for it just might bring you your undoing.

Truly, a tragedy for the sane.

Alas! Dive in if you will, conquer it all if you must. Savour the unrelenting turmoil from deep within. Embrace it entirely. Enjoy it bit by bit.

Madness is the culmination of all things. True, it can be fire and light; free, volatile and powerful. It brings out in you an ecstatic feeling of liberation and energy, making you feel omnipotent, maybe even immortal. But at the same time, it is darkness. Pitch black and deafening. It can consume you and drain you of all your vigour, as I said, until you are yourself no longer. And those demons that hide in that abyss start to creep up and usurp their way into your being. For we all have demons. And you are no longer anything but a shell.

There is a thin line defining the balance between the two. One wrong tip and you will lose yourself to that darkness. Keeping that balance is in itself herculean, like a man wearing stilettos walking through a tightrope. But it is a necessary task in order for you to go back, well, that is if you want to go back.

However, if you do manage to emerge, if you did will it and if you can, look at yourself in the mirror and stare deep into your eyes and ask yourself this: is that still you?

Who knows, maybe you did manage to succeed in your adventure and came out of it pristine and whole. Maybe you did manage to keep those demons deep within you at bay, and detained them far enough away from the surface.

Maybe you did. But then again, maybe not?

But rest easy and fear not, for you might not even be sane enough to care.

For we all have demons. And without realising it, maybe we have become one. Maybe we are.