Once upon a time, I would wish for something bad to happen to me, just so I would have a reason to feel sorrow, instead of just feeling a blanket of guilt. I wanted to feel something so deeply it would overcome me. I'm only familiar with sad feelings, and so it only makes sense to want to feel worse. I believed anything to be better than the constant ache of nothingness inside.

When I was very small, I was happy. I'm sure I was sad at times, but I don't remember them anymore. I remember the way my mother held me, the joy I felt in her arms, and snuggling up with my teddy bear as I fell asleep.

But that all ended when my mother died, my father left me with his parents, and Grandmother took Teddy away.

I didn't know what I had done wrong, just that I had deserved the pain I felt, and the strong hand with which I was raised, allowing for and receiving no affection. I guess it was then that the constant guilt inside of me began.

I know now, in my head, that I shouldn't feel this way, but my heart does not understand. When Victoria came in and out of my life again, it was a brief freedom from my constant of sorrow, not only while I believed her to love, but also when I discovered who she truly was.

After all, it was still better than the nothingness in which I have always existed. I felt something, deeply, for the first time in my life.

Afterwards, I began to wonder if emotions were as worthwhile as they are reputed to be.

I shut myself off to the world, especially to Ray. Ray represented light, and even in my decision to shun it, it drew me in, ever so slowly. Before long, I found myself willingly going towards that light.

And in reaching for that light, I have discovered I can never touch it. There is a darkness in me that swallows it like a black hole, yet I yearn for the light to reach my soul, to free me from the dark mist that surrounds it. The only light in my soul is my love for his light, his essence, his being, but it is a dark, twisted light that he would never accept once he knew of its existence.

He will never accept my love for him. I do truly love him, his purity that he tries to hide, just as I hide my darkness. But I can never ask it of him. Not because I am frightened of my love not being returned, but because I am frightened, if he were to return my love, it would destroy the light that I so dearly love, tainting it with the blackness that covers my soul - the blackness that tells me I'm not good enough for happiness, the blackness that will not let me be happy. I might be able to break away, but it will find me again. It always has.

It always will.