14.

Everyone is afraid of the slinky feeling that arrives in the night and twists itself around your heart. Farming its poison into your blood stream as it travels up into your brain. It starts just as a shadow of a doubt, giving you the slight feeling of discomfort. From there it twists and pulls your emotions out of place. It whispered in your ear little lies that make you unsure of your own judgment.

This shadow, this tiny and insignificant shadow has brought down kingdoms, pulled apart families and divided so many relationships both platonic and romantic. And there is no weapon for us to use to defend ourselves against this silent destroyer. We can do all we can to put our trust into our decisions, but this shadow is as patient as the ocean.

It wants.

It sits and waits, coiled around our hearts, waiting and eroding until it makes a move on our emotions. It can control even the most peaceful among us, influencing one small decision at a time until it is a powerful enough to go for the kill. What do I do?

The slimey feeling it leaves behind is tainted with betrayal and shame. Every time it leaves my body, I make an oath to my heart and emotions that it won’t affect me again.

But I always break my oath. I can’t help it.

How?

How can this one feeling have the power to bring down civilisations? How can this one emotion overrule all the others and drive us to commit acts we know we shouldn’t? Sometimes it crashes over us like a dark wave in a storm, shaking and dislodging everything in its path. Other times it floats down to us like a leaf falling off a branch. Should we be embracing it? Is it a normal emotion that over time we have come to exclude? Or has it slowly developed over the millennia as its hinger for chaos grew?

Sometimes we attract the shadow ourselves. Sometimes it is justified that we listen to the slithery shadow that whips around our hair to whisper in our ears. Maybe this is why we can never overcome it, because there are those rare occasions that the terrible gut feeling is right.