Born Into Darkness

Frigid...

Dark...

The change was instant; one moment, mind numbing pain tore his nerves apart, the next: sublime relief—a heavy blanket of cold and an unyielding curtain of darkness. He shivered under the cold embrace of this new environment as his eyes darted around trying to pry the secrets of his surrounding from the cruel darkness.

Was he dead, was this the afterlife?

He dropped his head back on the ground; giving up on trying to pry the mystery of his new environment. He gave in to the cold and acclamated to the darkness. Wasn't this the relief he sought, the escape from reality he begged for his entire life? It was in the form of endless boundless darkness, but he welcomed it nonetheless.

Gone were the days of pain and suffering.

His eyes peered into the endless veil.

Lifeless?

The void appeared so. Was this eternity then? It had to be, he would exist in this lifeless void for the rest of his life. He let out a sigh who's echo traversed the void.

Life was an overstatement, was it not? He had, after all, experienced the cold embrace of death, and now he was accepting it; making peace with... his trail of thought broke for a second as his mind yearned to relieve his earlier life, to gloss over every detail meticulously and come to terms with... what led to his demise.

He shook it off and shuddered as he inhaled to calm himself.

That life was behind him, it wasn't the best anyway.

However, try as he could, in the silence of the unyielding void, his mind forced him to remember. His heart ached, but the cogs of his memory churned evey detail to the fore of his thoughts.

A trip down memory lane led him to his past life, his cheeks became awash in a soothing warmth that reflected the pain that plagued his life. He wanted to ignore it, but tears rolled down as he stifled a cry.

Regret.

Was that it, his life, after all the effort he squeezed into it, was it to end on such a sour note?

He clenched his fist and banged it against the ground.

Making peace with dying was easier said than done, none of his ambitions had been realized; that hurt.

He had amounted to nothing after more than two decades; he felt inadequate, an average man with an average life marred by lofty dreams beyond his reach; it looked like so in his eyes.

He loathed dreaming.

Icarus had better luck, at least he got closer to the sun. Michael had aimed for that same sun, but even the moon proved elusive.

Hope was the progenitor of his pain; a cruel blade that cut down his strength.

Having the light of hope held out before him but his reach so underwhelming—that glow like a wraith; seen but unable to be touched—made him feel powerless.

The gods were truly cruel. Why give people the illusion of better days and a maddening desire to pursue that illusion when life was just as cruel as those it served. A stiffled cry echoed amid his thoughts.

Had it's masters forsaken him all together?

Naive.

He had thought, after all his supplication and devotion; begging the powers that be to bestow upon him a sliver of luck, that they would turn his gloomy life into a starry sky, but fate remained cruel and twisted and life... an absent parent, cold and uncaring.

It afforded him none of the luxury he so craved, ignoring his pleas and relishing in his pain.

It was because of his pain that he gave up on trying to submit to a higher power and returned the favor by hating everything that was life, and himself even more for allowing hope to make a home in his heart.

"Hope is a crutch for those whose hearts refused to given up; to hold themselves up and fight for a tomorrow that wasn't even theirs", he had told himself after the taste of failure became a staple of his bleak life.

He was a victim of this cruel joke of life, it shackled him to an illusion that eventually shattered his mind and crippled his growth.

Had his naivety reached such a level that he believed himself worthy of a new beginning?

In the darkness, embraced by cold, he allowed himself to laugh at his naivety.

"You really were a fool" he murmured to himself.

He blamed his misfortune on the will perpetrated by those who were born with strength. Their mere presence as beacons of strength and change, pushed the weak to aim for a strength that life never intended to be in their grasp.

If he had known of this, he would have given up earlier.

Conflicted.

Of course hope is what kept him from loosing himself; he couldn't deny it. It held him up in his darkest moments; the suffering was blurred out, if only by a little.

He still managed to live another day, to appreciate....

...there was nothing to appreciate; it was just that, hope helped him see every day through.

The conflict of to-give-up or to-keep-moving-forward was orchestrated by the hope he allowed to plague his judgment. It was a necessary compromise back then. Later on, however, he wished to rid himself of the illusive light at the end of the tunnel, but the flaw of man plagued him.

The nascent desire to do more, to become more, to surpass your limits and unshackle yourself from weakness. It drove him to push himself harder after every fall, cementing hopes place in his life.

The struggle was meant to build a man.

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger? what a joke."

'A broken man would remain broken no matter the circumstances' was what he came to conclude.

He hated even strength.

To become strength.

It was undeniable that that was his desire.

Laying on his back feeling the hard ragged ground press against it as his mind wandered through the philosophical memory lane that was his life, he discovered his deepest desire.

It was to become more, to put to dust his weakness and live a life that afforded him courage and strength to face... everything.

Was that, then, why he became pathetic, because he was unable to realize his goal? No?

"Maybe", he uttered into the void.

It was because he hated what he fought for.

His will was conflicted because he loathed strength, it felt like an unachievable goal that life set to mock the him.

But... he couldn't ignore his desire for it; it grew with every failure, with every shortcoming his heart burned with a determination to become strength.

Forget weakness.

What strength did he seek anyway, he was merely a man trying to live his day after all, it was not of the physical kind that much was evident.

Maybe it was the strength to unshackle himself from his suffering, the strength to embrace the joy of life that he chose to ignore for it seemed futile to pursue it as a broken man. The strength to allow his mind to think about his future without ever wandering to his past. The strength to not let his past define him.

The strength to overcome his worries, to set aside his pain and pursue something greater than himself.

What would that be then, what did greater than himself look like, what did it entail?

He had, for the majority of his life regarded himself dimly ; no wonder his life was in shambles. He held himself in such low regard that it destroyed his spirit to pursue strength and become greater than his past.

How different would his life have been if he gave up his weak mind in favor of a stronger more willed and directioned mind. Would his life have been different then? Would he still be plagued by his current worries?

His face felt cold as the tears dried up, his whole body felt cold and... lifeless.

This was the end, this had to be the end.

Maybe if life afforded him a second chance he would pursue this question, see himself to the peak of his strength and judge which is better.

But had he not resigned to his new fate, that of existing as a mere fragment of his past self with no way of altering his past or redefining his future?

"I am dead now, it's... for the best"

Then it was futile to mule over could's and could-have-been's.

'Yes this is for the best', he thought to himself letting his pain and worries that plagued his mind wash away. 'It is better this way', he affirmed in resignation.

A warmth enveloped him, not the physical kind, the kind that soothed the heart. Warm at the realization that he could finally give up without a care in the world. The Michael that lived worried about life, the Michael that was dead couldn't be bothered by it.

He smiled in the darkness.