[Mad] - Find what you're looking for
You say you gotta go and find yourself
You say that you're becoming someone else
Don't recognize the face in the mirror looking back at you
You say you're leaving as you look away
I know there's really nothing left to say
Just know I'm here whenever you need me, I will wait for you*
There was something inside of her she didn't understand, something that clawed at her consciousness and raked across her soul when she slid sideways into dreams. It was dark, and it was hungry, and it was growing. Her apartment felt too small. His arms around her were too tight. When it welled up from the depths, it caught in her throat, and she thought she would suffocate. The small scars on her body burned near constantly now, little pinpricks of pain, and concentrating on them was sometimes all that kept her moving through the day with any focus at all. Divert the darkness to the burn, and she could get her work done. Make him hurt her a bit more when the sun set, and she could stay through the night, and not fade away. But it was getting more difficult, every day a struggle. She saw more, and in seeing, she felt it. Their joys, their pains, their shadows, their light. It washed over her, and where it had always driven her to help, there was something in her now that was beginning to crave it, even as it scraped her raw. She wanted more. More sensation. More of their feelings. More of their lives. She watched them, and she saw the cracks, the places to push where emotion would flare and feed that yearning she didn't understand. In the middle of a conversation with him, she'd find herself playing to them, finding the words, the ways, pushing him toward something more. Good, bad, it didn't matter, so long as it heightened. There could be no level ground or her veins seemed to literally ache and pulse inside of her. It was exhausting. Worse was when she found herself using it, twisting along those pathways in him, in her boss, in her clients, in the girl at the coffee shop, manipulating their emotions up and down just to see if she could, just to get what she wanted.
It sickened her. The other side of her, the part of her she knew, recognized, thought of as herself rebelled, and she found herself curled up on the cold tiles of the floor, sobbing, barely remembering how she got there.
She had to go.
So I'll let you go, I'll set you free
And when you've seen what you need to see
When you find you...come back to me
And I hope you find everything that you need.
I'll be right here, waiting to see.
You find you...come back to me
The woods were familiar, and not. They hadn't changed, but she supposed she had and that meant things around her changed because she perceived them differently. Closing her eyes, she breathed in the scents she knew, imprinted in her mind, of rotting leaves underfoot and moss on trees and clean mountain air and hay from the fields, warmed by the sun. It was everything the City wasn't, quiet and calm, but even so, she felt herself searching, reaching out, finding the pulse of the place, the memories it held and drinking them up, then searching further to find the people, latching on to that presence of someone else, their emotions invading hers even though she tried to push them out. Things weren't so immediate here. He wasn't pressed close against her, wrapped inside of her mind and under her skin, until she couldn't always tell who was feeling what, but others were, and she hadn't run far enough. Worried looks flashed over her head at dinner, though she didn't need to see them to feel it pulsing, making her shoulders knot with tension and her stomach sour slightly. Her head hurt all the time, and she couldn't eat.
They watched. She waited. And the feeling crept in fast like the flashing shadows cast by the headlights of a passing car, darting up inside of her until she felt herself choking on it again. Only when she gave in, opened enough to actively pull in everything around her, let its demands take over did the feeling ease, and she couldn't, wouldn't. Not when she didn't understand, didn't know what she was even doing to them, what she was doing to her.
She left again.
And I can't get close if you're not there
I can't get inside if there's no soul to bare
I can't fix you, I can't save you
It's something you'll have to do.
There were assignments from her editor, and she took them. The further away, the more she traveled, the better it seemed. Back in the City, avoiding the apartment, she gritted her teeth and met with her boss. His fault lines were easy to see, easy to manipulate it, and though the whole place was washing over her hard and fast, she focused on him, on using whatever it was she had inside of her to get this. She wasn't experienced enough. She hadn't earned it, professionally. But she could do it, and they both knew it, and she needed it. A week later she was on the edges of a war zone. There was pain, so much of it, all around her, but it helped them to tell their stories, and something in her eased when she pulled the words, the emotion out of them. Scars burned, and her stomach twisted, and it wasn't right, even so, but she could justify it, at least at little. The air shimmered, hazy with the darkness and cruelty and death all around her, but it seemed to satisfy whatever was inside of her enough to quiet it as she took the pain and destruction and used her art and her words to craft it into something meaningful, tried to find beauty in the despair. Not fully satisfied, something told her, it wouldn't work forever, but the phone would ring, and his voice would be on the other end, and she could smile and talk to him like a normal person without twisting everything he said, and when she came back for a few days, she could sleep in his arms without feeling like she was going to scream. And when the starving feeling came, she was back in the trenches, subduing it, letting it twist up inside of her, and praying that some day, somehow, she would find something to quiet it for good.
*Lyrics are David Cook's "Come Back to Me"
You say that you're becoming someone else
Don't recognize the face in the mirror looking back at you
You say you're leaving as you look away
I know there's really nothing left to say
Just know I'm here whenever you need me, I will wait for you*
There was something inside of her she didn't understand, something that clawed at her consciousness and raked across her soul when she slid sideways into dreams. It was dark, and it was hungry, and it was growing. Her apartment felt too small. His arms around her were too tight. When it welled up from the depths, it caught in her throat, and she thought she would suffocate. The small scars on her body burned near constantly now, little pinpricks of pain, and concentrating on them was sometimes all that kept her moving through the day with any focus at all. Divert the darkness to the burn, and she could get her work done. Make him hurt her a bit more when the sun set, and she could stay through the night, and not fade away. But it was getting more difficult, every day a struggle. She saw more, and in seeing, she felt it. Their joys, their pains, their shadows, their light. It washed over her, and where it had always driven her to help, there was something in her now that was beginning to crave it, even as it scraped her raw. She wanted more. More sensation. More of their feelings. More of their lives. She watched them, and she saw the cracks, the places to push where emotion would flare and feed that yearning she didn't understand. In the middle of a conversation with him, she'd find herself playing to them, finding the words, the ways, pushing him toward something more. Good, bad, it didn't matter, so long as it heightened. There could be no level ground or her veins seemed to literally ache and pulse inside of her. It was exhausting. Worse was when she found herself using it, twisting along those pathways in him, in her boss, in her clients, in the girl at the coffee shop, manipulating their emotions up and down just to see if she could, just to get what she wanted.
It sickened her. The other side of her, the part of her she knew, recognized, thought of as herself rebelled, and she found herself curled up on the cold tiles of the floor, sobbing, barely remembering how she got there.
She had to go.
So I'll let you go, I'll set you free
And when you've seen what you need to see
When you find you...come back to me
And I hope you find everything that you need.
I'll be right here, waiting to see.
You find you...come back to me
The woods were familiar, and not. They hadn't changed, but she supposed she had and that meant things around her changed because she perceived them differently. Closing her eyes, she breathed in the scents she knew, imprinted in her mind, of rotting leaves underfoot and moss on trees and clean mountain air and hay from the fields, warmed by the sun. It was everything the City wasn't, quiet and calm, but even so, she felt herself searching, reaching out, finding the pulse of the place, the memories it held and drinking them up, then searching further to find the people, latching on to that presence of someone else, their emotions invading hers even though she tried to push them out. Things weren't so immediate here. He wasn't pressed close against her, wrapped inside of her mind and under her skin, until she couldn't always tell who was feeling what, but others were, and she hadn't run far enough. Worried looks flashed over her head at dinner, though she didn't need to see them to feel it pulsing, making her shoulders knot with tension and her stomach sour slightly. Her head hurt all the time, and she couldn't eat.
They watched. She waited. And the feeling crept in fast like the flashing shadows cast by the headlights of a passing car, darting up inside of her until she felt herself choking on it again. Only when she gave in, opened enough to actively pull in everything around her, let its demands take over did the feeling ease, and she couldn't, wouldn't. Not when she didn't understand, didn't know what she was even doing to them, what she was doing to her.
She left again.
And I can't get close if you're not there
I can't get inside if there's no soul to bare
I can't fix you, I can't save you
It's something you'll have to do.
There were assignments from her editor, and she took them. The further away, the more she traveled, the better it seemed. Back in the City, avoiding the apartment, she gritted her teeth and met with her boss. His fault lines were easy to see, easy to manipulate it, and though the whole place was washing over her hard and fast, she focused on him, on using whatever it was she had inside of her to get this. She wasn't experienced enough. She hadn't earned it, professionally. But she could do it, and they both knew it, and she needed it. A week later she was on the edges of a war zone. There was pain, so much of it, all around her, but it helped them to tell their stories, and something in her eased when she pulled the words, the emotion out of them. Scars burned, and her stomach twisted, and it wasn't right, even so, but she could justify it, at least at little. The air shimmered, hazy with the darkness and cruelty and death all around her, but it seemed to satisfy whatever was inside of her enough to quiet it as she took the pain and destruction and used her art and her words to craft it into something meaningful, tried to find beauty in the despair. Not fully satisfied, something told her, it wouldn't work forever, but the phone would ring, and his voice would be on the other end, and she could smile and talk to him like a normal person without twisting everything he said, and when she came back for a few days, she could sleep in his arms without feeling like she was going to scream. And when the starving feeling came, she was back in the trenches, subduing it, letting it twist up inside of her, and praying that some day, somehow, she would find something to quiet it for good.
*Lyrics are David Cook's "Come Back to Me"