Echoes

"I have a great life. Loving parents, siblings that I adore. I've never gone hungry, or known physical pain. I've suffered no trauma... And yet there is another side of me that is... different. Where I wander, a shadow follows, something haunting and dark. It settles around my shoulders like a cloak, speaks to me when I'm alone, stares back at me from the mirror. My dark wavy hair, my silver eyes... they are reminders of him. I am cursed. I am tainted. I don't want to succumb to the urges that strike me. The impulses that scare me. I don't want to be like him. And yet... A small part of me wishes I knew more. Because I feel like a part of him is very much here. I'm just afraid to let it take control, to have it twist me into something so polluted. That it ruins me. I don't want to be someone others fear. Especially... her... So I push it down, way down. I suffocate it. I smother it. Because I refuse to end up like him. Ruined, broken, and gone. I will not let it ruin me. And somehow, I WILL have her."--