My Shadow is Alive

I was twelve the first time I heard something whispering to me.At first I thought I was picking up nearby conversations, or just hearing things while getting lost in thought. It didn’t seem like a big deal. The only concerning thing was what I was hearing.The whispers were pointing things out to me. Mundane things at first. How nice that girl’s earrings looked, or how my desk neighbor got a higher score on the test that period. It was just small things on occasion I could brush off. Then as middle school went on they started getting more aggressive.I would feel something watching me. No matter where I went or what time it was I always felt eyes on me. I heard the whispers a lot more starting around eight grade. They talked more about comparing me to other kids in my grade, or focusing on things I did wrong. It was like a weird verbal consciousness to a degree.If I felt nervous about a test I heard them going on about how I’d fail.If I said something kind of awkward I’d hear it repeating in my ear the rest of the day. Louder and louder the more it was said.It was unnerving, but I was able to power through most of the time. I cried in the bathroom at school more times than I care to admit maybe. I lived though.High School was really where things went belly up.The thing about having a voice in your head constantly telling you everything you do wrong? You start to feel afraid. People scared me. Going outside scared me. Anything that had a chance to go wrong scared me. I stopped taking a lot of chances. Which meant I was boring. Boring people don’t tend to keep a lot of friends. A few people stayed with me into highschool, but most found better people to be around.I was alone a lot more. That’s when it just stopped being voices. At first I’d see it moving from the corner of my eye only to go still just in time.My shadow.The voices were still there telling me the same things, except they grew more vicious. They called me worthless. They talked about how much I was disappointing everyone around me. Then my shadow would move closer and closer with every word. That’s when I started realizing something wasn’t right.I tried to tell people. My parents thought I was just acting out for attention. My school counselor shook their head and consoled me in that condescending way and gave me pamphlets on puberty. I only told one friend as a last ditch effort. She never spoke to me again and somehow it felt like half the school knew about me being “crazy” not too long after.I just wanted some fucking help.I was alone though. My shadow started finally grabbing me. For a while it was just at night while I laid in bed unable to sleep because of the whispers constantly in my ears. I could feel it slithering over my body and pressing down on me. It weighed on me like a pile of stones creeping up until it smothered me. I could barely breathe some nights.I wanted to scream but they’d never come out.Sleeping became harder every night. I was angry and bitter. At who I don’t really know. My parents? The other kids at school? Just life in general? It just felt like I was cursed and suffering and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why.I skipped classes more than I went by tenth grade. The roof was a popular hang out for me back then when I needed to hide. The door on the stairwell was supposed to be locked, but it’d been broken since before I even attended.It was a clear day and I was upset over something. I can’t really remember. Just that I was bawling my eyes out sitting on the edge of the roof. That’s when I felt something heavy creeping over my body.My shadow loomed over me and wrapped its arms around my waist and shoved. I screamed and planted myself as tightly as I could down on that roof. I pushed back against it feeling myself slide inch by inch closer to the edge. It whispered the whole way there.“Just let go.”“It’ll all be over, all the pain will be gone.”“What's the point?”I stopped fighting for a second. As awful as it sounds it had a point. What the fuck was I resisting for? Everyday was just more pain in an endless nightmare. My family could barely handle me, school was a mess, and the few friends I had were probably better off without me.Wouldn’t it have just been easier to let it push me off the edge?It didn’t though. It brought me right there at the very edge of the roof, and waited. It didn’t say another word or move. I felt it watching though. I knew what it wanted. All I had to do was give one final inch.I went back inside in the end, but I’ve heard about how much of a coward I am for it ever since.That was about a decade ago. It still whispers to me, and it still grabs, moves, or does other things to try and hurt me. Sometimes it puts something in my hand, or it points out a ledge. It never hurts me directly though.I think some people know by now. I don’t see how they couldn’t. But most don’t care, or they’re scared. I understand. Of course, there’s the rare few who try their best to help and let me cry to them when it gets to be too much. God, those people are probably the reason I’m alive.Some days are worse than others. There’s days where I can almost forget it’s there. I smile and enjoy myself like a normal person. Then there’s days where I lay in bed listening to toxic whispers and feeling it pin me down without even resisting. It’s a cycle I’ve gotten oddly used to.The one thing that sticks with me though is the one time I asked it why it hated me so much.“I’m you.” It said and was quiet for the rest of the day. via /r/nosleep https://ift.tt/3j4iiNa