Will I miss them, the sleepless nights, whispering secrets to the darkness?

Maybe, or maybe not, but I will remember them. I’ll remember the intricately woven silence as I traced the shadows on my walls. I will remember the warmth of my haven, and the lack of a symbolically driven force playing at my mind. I’ll remember the images dancing across my imagination in exquisite form, as an unending song repeated in my head. I’ll remember dreams and plans, exaggerated and bemused, filling paper and memories with asphyxiating phrases, as the shimmering of the fading day left me desolate.

I’ll remember the cruelty of the night, stretching out to cover an eternity; the insomnia and the words, etching them deep inside my conscious mind. I’ll remember the pain of the passing days, the longing for a cure, and the majestic beauty that held my shattered spirit.

Will I miss those nights?

Most likely. The hours of sacrifice and joy, matched by the rage and bewilderment driven solely by passion, lacking any sign of hope. The discoveries found on dead trees, breathing life into the ink flowing over them. The limitless walls of a shadowed room providing me with the only sense of home I have ever known.

I might miss the comfort of the one piece of stability and familiarity, sparkling in my memory like the star-strewn sky. Holding tight to the medications and diagnoses, irrelevant and unused, describing an adventure words could never have justice for; the delicately sketched photographs and the dead and withered roses, reminders of a past once lost and nearly forgotten.

Will I miss those nights?

Yes, for they brought the transitions of my being, delving into emotions deep and impenetrable. The fear as I watched things fall apart, replicated in the terror of the spaces between the stars. The numbness I felt in protection of all I could save of my identity ever lost and regained. The anger and betrayal as life plummeted, and I was held hostage by unseen chains I didn’t have the strength to break. The anxiety that stole pieces of my sanity, leaving a veiled existence covering a broken and shivering body, the panic attacks that visited me in my sleep, not allowing a moments rest.

I will miss those nights greatly; they shaped my future by piecing together my past. Those nights found what the daylight could never resurrect, a knowledge and truth once lost in obscurity, giving my soul more than hope could ever offer. In those nights, I found the beauty of the darkness, and the beauty of all in the world surrounding me. I found the glamor of life, death, and all other opposing forces.

Those nights created me. They gave me a basis of survival for many long nights to come, with both the darkness and the light as my friend. Everything I’ve gained in life relates back to those hours of solitude, those hours of analyzing life and everything that had happened. The darkness gave me one of the most valuable gifts I have ever received: understanding. Understanding of the insanity of the world around me, understanding of events both fated and willed, and, most importantly, understanding of myself, and everything I am. Self-discovery had been the longest journey of my life, ending with the realization that every definite identity is merely another mask. My true identity lies in each experience I’ve survived, and my drained masks lie in the dead silence of those nights.