So much time has passed, and ink spilled, between the moment I Escaped the white and began unleashing my soul upon it.
Make no mistake. The white is still there. It beseeches me from behind the veil of pitch black words now scrawled upon it. I cannot hear it. The cacophony of words, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters that I’ve let loose upon it has—for the moment, at least—drown out the sedate pleas of that crippling complacency from which I escaped.
Between the white that—not so long ago—consumed me, and this moment right now, there lies a smoldering wasteland of venom, and insecurity, and fear, and hatred, and love; all of which lay naked, and unashamed, before you on the previous pages.
That is the Black, and it is just as all-consuming and deceptive as the White…no more, no less.
The Black is, at first, a cold Glass of water after a long walk through the white desert. My heart soars at the site of it. There is a longing from the very core of my being. As I near it, there is hesitation because maybe, just maybe, it isn’t really there. Perhaps it’s a mirage created by the mental starvation of looking at nothing but the white for so long. Then I touch it. It’s real, and I can actually feel it in my grasp. Instinct takes over, and the cool hardness of the glass is on my lips before I realize it. Somewhere, deep inside of me, a voice says to slow down…savor it; the next glass is not a given. Before the voice is finished speaking the water is gone. It is traveling through me now…providing the most beautiful, if fleeting, moment of relief. The Black is the thing I most desire…the water after the walk.
Now sated, I relax, and the black takes control. Good and evil are just words scrawled upon a page that speaks to the darkness inside me. I want to believe that some things are sacred, but everything within me is vulnerable. Everything is white or black; written or not written.
Every word I read spreads the poison further. Every paragraph eats a little more of my soul. I am weak in my own truth, and the abandon of the words before me sets me on fire. It sparks a vision of freedom that I will never attain. It taunts my tepid life with the flames of reality. I am weak, and broken, and consumed by the blacks sublime ability to say what I cannot, think what I dare not, and do what I will not.
And then—just as quickly as the words came to consume me—they are gone. I am abandoned, and lost, and floating in the void somewhere between the white and the black.
