The Haunting, The Haunted,

It's a bit scary, I think. Disembodied voices. Not because they exist, but because - oh, Mr. Hardy, you have absolutely no idea the fear you've inspired within me just by being who you were. Fear. I fear falling into the same pit you fell into. I am truly terrified of it.

Because I can hear them. And they hear me...sometimes. I can hear them talking to me, comforting me, trying to move me on in life. And I've...been listening. I've been doing what they've been telling me to. All this time I've believed they were an extension of me, I never considered them ghosts, supernatural. I still don't. But I wonder what my mind is actually trying to come up with, actually trying to draw me into. It's not just voices, it's not just personalities, it's not just other beings. It's other worlds. The hill. The isolated war zone in the middle of the jungle. The river. The room. They exist in the place this dreamer knows. They exist. And despite my succumbing to it, believing they are places of relief, of comfort, and even if they aren't of actual reality, of truth - of what is actually happening within me. Supernatural? No. They are as real as the real world.

But nobody knows. Nobody knows.

I wish I wasn't the one studying literature. I wish I was writing it. I wish I could forever hide behind the veils of fabrications I've woven for myself. I don't know how to express myself otherwise. I don't know how to be blunt and direct, I don't think there are really blunt or direct statements I could use to describe what I'm going through; they would all contradict with one another and make no sense at all. I must be abstract, that is the only way I think I can be understood.

They used to listen to me patiently as I tried to spell it out. They used to tell me things. Real people, I mean. And I used to listen, used to try to apply what they said in my life. But I've come to learn it never works, that I will never get my answers from people and that all I really want them to do is shut up. I suppose I do want to speak to someone about it, but I don't really care if they understand, or are even listening. I don't care for hearing them any more. Following their advice has merely served to distraught me. I'm sick and tired of listening to answers I will never apply in my daily life. I have decided not to question, at least not verbally, knowing full well I will never find the answers I seek. "Answers". Not from other people, at least.

Mr. Hardy, have I fallen to your level now?

But I know where to look for solace. I just am not looking.