{"id":1904,"date":"2021-05-25T08:00:26","date_gmt":"2021-05-25T06:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/?p=1904"},"modified":"2023-10-17T11:22:43","modified_gmt":"2023-10-17T09:22:43","slug":"sky-blue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/2021\/05\/sky-blue\/","title":{"rendered":"Sky Blue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Image:<\/strong> “Depression #4 (standing at the window)”<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0ndanger<\/a><\/span>\u00a0is licensed under\u00a0CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a> Source<\/a><\/p>\n

Author:<\/strong> Anonymous<\/p>\n

Content warning<\/strong>: this text has light mentions of eating disorders, anxiety, and drugs.<\/em><\/p>\n

you found Happiness<\/em>
\nin Darkness<\/em>
\nyou found the Light<\/em>
\nin the Night<\/em>
\nyou found Passion<\/em>
\nin Starvation<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

what you didn\u2019t know<\/em>
\nis that you lost your Reason<\/em>
\nlong time ago.<\/em><\/p>\n

LOST MY TIME
\nLOST MY PLACE
\nIN SKY BLUE\u2026<\/p>\n

I\u2019m wandering in this megalopolis; I\u2019m feeling a little bit hazy, I don\u2019t really know how I got here, but it does not bother me. A lot of people around me are walking with such conviction and determination, and it amazes me how much energy they put in their march. Confused and dazzled by their steel armor, Anxiety, until then calmly muffled in my chemical fleece, begins to seethe, threatening to erupt like a nasty bile and disintegrate my organs, my nerves, my brain, leaving my carnal envelope definitely empty and ready for a reboot. What a bitter place!<\/em> I know I should have been more discrete. Now, I have been detected as an intruder. They are diluting my cocoon, slowly, the cotton is dripping with an icy liquid, almost like soldering iron and I can feel it invade and pervade every inch of my living body; I can hear a mechanical humming and I know they have sent their steel parasites to penetrate my mind. Their little legs, like metallic ants, are working for my absolute mutation: the annihilation of my deviant character.<\/p>\n

At that moment, my mouth opens like a gaping hole. From this bottomless gash emerges a deafening shrill, the final cry of all humanity. Someone throws a grenade in it and it resorbs instantly, as I feel the red little pill going down my throat.
\nIt has not always been like that. Before the Big Fall, remember? You were well at ease with other people. We\u2019ve been stuck down here for a while. You pretend that nothing happened, but deep down you know she has taken possession of you. She loves to play with you: sometimes she cuts one string, and you end up dislocated like an obsolete puppet. She knows how to keep you close, because she often fastens a new chain to your head. She successfully tamed you, to the point that you\u2019re afraid of the chains breaking. Afraid of being alone again. She made you believe that she was vital to you. And you know what worked best? She turned your world upside down, and made you believe that the Others are your enemies, and not her. Yet, you cannot understand this. But I can open your eyes. <\/em><\/p>\n

I must escape, they\u2019re blocking my way, I have to beat them, I have to go in the opposite direction of their infernal pace and find the light again. Yes, but first, find me.<\/em>
\n\u00a0<\/em>
\nI\u2019m slowly regaining consciousness, after what seemed to be an eternity. A dreamless sleep. But the world around me is not fuzzy anymore. Instead, I can feel my heart beating like mad, the adrenaline is rushing through my veins. My body is going at full speed. How am I capable of such prowess? My bones and muscles have taken over my brain; impulsiveness becomes the master of my decisions. While the drug is violently waking up my aching limbs, I know She\u2019s happy. I\u2019m totally in sync with Her. How funny it is to be satisfied with that. You\u2019re in harmony with her passion for self-destruction.<\/em> She can rest, while I\u2019m taking over. I\u2019m looking up and as always, it\u2019s a starless night; the moon is shining like the light at the end of a tunnel. The darkness of the streets seems impenetrable; from below the buildings are burnt trees without branches and their threatening shadow prevent me from going further. Still, as I don\u2019t have any control over my corporeal movements, I\u2019m stepping into this urban wood.
\nWe have always liked this city. The rumors about its open-mindedness, the kindness of its residents but above all else, its particular nightlife. We had never seen that somewhere else. The city where you can be anyone, and at the same time no one. Humans spending time with other humans, free from any kind of social labels, the ones we always hated. We felt good there because sometimes it seemed like we did not belong anywhere. So maybe we needed this neutral environment to entirely reveal and celebrate peacefully our individuality.<\/em><\/p>\n

Discretion has always been a specific trait of our personality; this is why anonymity has always been attractive. At that time, we knew that she was already there, yet she wasn\u2019t strong enough to push us to the bottom of our reason. But she managed to do it. Now that we see the world from below, everything is terrifying. People have muted into malevolent titans with scorpions\u2019 tails, ready to harpoon us so we will swell and swell and swell ever more and become as big as they are. You became afraid of them, and this was her greater accomplishment: she made you think that Others are out of reach and that you will never be as good as them. So, we sunk into the night, blinded by the thought that in the dark laid our light. At that moment, she knew she could invert right and wrong, just and unjust, reasonable and unreasonable, just as she pleased. Because you were scared about these giant devils, she made you think that the tinier you were, the more you\u2019ll become invisible before their eyes. At first it was hard for her: we were a question mark in a universe that needs definitions, but we still felt that we deserved our material place one day or another. Insidious, she stripped us from our substantial attachments and of the few certitudes we had, imprisoned us on the other side of the mirror, where down is up and left is right, mutilating our last perception of reality. Because she did not like our body image, she persuaded you that you did not either. She dragged you down with her on the corporeal side too, extolling the virtues of drugs, singing their magical ability to transform your corrupt vision and manipulate your self-image. You felt sexy, mighty, but, above all, it numbed the pain. It\u2019s like playing Russian roulette, and you like the taste of metal in your mouth. Drugs would falsely reverse your natural world, deceiving you while letting you think that you were on the upper side again, persisting in the treachery when you could feel them running in your blood, letting you glimpse what you still think to be the gates of heaven. But I now know for a fact that you entered hell a long time ago. <\/em>
\nLike every night, I find myself in front of the reinforced door. It\u2019s the only source of light for several kilometers around. I can hear the usual melodic throbbing, its sharp and rhythmed noises coming from the entrails of the machine, sometimes punctuated with guttural roars of infernal beasts burning with desire voluntarily entrapped down here. The siren call attracts other damned souls, springing from the deafening darkness and slowly coming near the entrance like zombies enticed by fresh meat. Inscribed in red letters along the ledge above the portal the words I AM THE WAY TO THE CITY OF THE DEPRAVED are shining timidly, as if they did not want to be seen, as if it was only a bad joke, but hopefully, it\u2019s not. Hell is real and it is man-made<\/em>. I know the drug has seriously kicked in, as I\u2019m staring, aghast, at the countless snakes rising over the head of the bouncer: one move and I\u2019m out. The more I stare at them, the more I\u2019m realizing that they are either biting at impostors or charmed by genuine evil souls. At that moment, She knows that I\u2019m in danger. She wakes up and hastily takes over, because only her viciousness will enchant these little demons. Their mouths twist in a vicious rictus.
\nAnd once again, I\u2019m falling down the blazing rabbit-hole.<\/p>\n

Come. You\u2019ll find me eight floors below.<\/em>
\n\u00a0<\/em>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The first time we heard about this club, we were really troubled and deeply disturbed at the thought of how it works. Eight floors, all built underground. No windows. No clocks. No mobile phones allowed. Time is the enemy down here; its power to change, the continuity of its movement are banished. Only eternity is allowed. It\u2019s a one-way road going downards, you cannot come back to reality by the same stairs: to reach the surface, there is a hidden passage you have to find by yourself. Every level looks alike, if you\u2019re not familiar with the place you lose count almost immediately. The air is heavy, foggy; the light sources are scattered and flashing at a rapid pace, meaning that you will never see the same thing even if you stand still. There is however a little particularity that only the regulars are aware of: if you take a look at the other living beings, you will notice that they are distinct from the previous floors.<\/em><\/p>\n

First floor. I\u2019m totally blinded by what seems to be a shower of sparks. Millions of light particles are dancing around me, enveloping me and penetrating my skin, muscles, nerves, until they reach the grey matter, and ultimately the core of my soul. Enchanted, I want to be one with the fire, let go of my carnal prison, dilute myself in this universe until I\u2019m nowhere but at the same time everywhere, until I become an ubiquitous energy, ultimately freeing my conscience from any material and earthly obstacles; don\u2019t you dare!!<\/em> \u00a0We already tried that once see where it took us<\/em> but oddly, I cannot let go of myself, I feel that there\u2019s a war in me oh yes, it\u2019s me against her<\/em> and something stronger is attracting me from below. I\u2019m hearing the thoughts of someone else IT\u2019S ME! <\/em>they are coming in successive waves and I\u2019m scared. Maybe I swallowed too much. Again, Anxiety, normally sedated threatens to blow me up, everything is going really fast around me the rapid rhythm of the hard techno is synchronized with my heartbeat I feel the sweat running on my temples the stroboscope blurs everything around me focus please, focus, focus<\/em>\u2026 Suddenly, a cold wave runs over me, from my toes to the top of my head. Anxiety puts its blade arms away, turns back into darkness. I feel sober again. I look around myself, and for the first time, I\u2019m really aware of what\u2019s happening here.<\/p>\n

The people filling the room are all richly dressed. Their clothes sparkle in the obscurity; they look like bronze figures of deities. As I get closer, I notice that a mask of gold covers their faces entirely. Faceless statues of an ancient time eroded by excesses and by their lust. These are only women; I can see their breast underneath their armor. Like sorceresses, they turn everything they touch into gold. The room is filled with magnificent beds, sofas but no one lolls into them. In a small alcove in the left corner of the room, an altar; illuminated with candles, some writing: MANEATER. I hear laments, they crave for the feeling of kissing, stroking, licking. This is hell down here, I thought women were free to do whatever they wanted?<\/em> Behind a glass wall, faces, grinning from ear to ear, watching libidinously the Chamber of Horrors. I had never been aware before of their suffering, I always thought it was a show. It\u2019s strange, I feel like I\u2019m more lucid. She\u2019s not happy.<\/p>\n

Oh, I know she\u2019s not happy. I can feel her trying to fill up your veins with her dark viscous poison, the one that immobilizes your willingness, and keep me glued to the bottom of your mind. Me, your Reason, your Happiness, Your real Self.<\/em><\/p>\n

Throughout the years, I observed. I observed her smallest deeds or gestures. I observed how she manipulated you, with what tools and what words in what order she used. I observed how she faked her pretended feelings for you <\/em>no, I know she likes me, doesn\u2019t she? Throughout all these years, she pretended that you\u2019d love your body by destroying it. She reversed the mirror. By throwing up, the sensation of the empty stomach would be pleasing <\/em>but the burning, oh, the burning; by over-exercising you\u2019d feel lighter <\/em>I couldn\u2019t walk for days; by starving you\u2019d feel powerful, above all these weak people <\/em>the time I didn\u2019t eat for a week and I fainted in front of everyone and everyone laughed and my father carried me and found out I was thumbing my nose at Newton\u2019s laws; by being thin you would please anyone <\/em>and all the boys who looked at me with disgust; by taking every kind of drugs you wouldn\u2019t eat for days<\/em> and I wouldn\u2019t sleep either and all the demons came back at night; by taking drugs even more often you would look inaccessible and you could really feel alive <\/em>oh yes we felt alive we loved that but we loved that too much and look where it got us? ; by rejecting the physical essence of life, what you loved since you were a child <\/em>remember I even wanted to be a cook you thought she was the right choice to protect you from the hostile environment in which you evolved. See? It is all wrong: she wants to replace life with death itself. <\/em>But I don\u2019t want to be dead.<\/p>\n

From all this observation, I learned. She doesn\u2019t know, but she\u2019s been teaching me <\/em>how to beat her. We have to crush Her.
\nWhat floor? How much time have I been asleep? Doesn\u2019t matter. I know what I have to do now. Quickly. I don\u2019t know how long I can keep Her quiet me neither it\u2019s now or never<\/em>. Under a heavy amount of dope, certain floors terrify me, such as the sixth. On a podium, creatures writhe wearing a mask of historic celebrities, but every time they try to talk, blood and snakes spurt from their mouth; the reptiles inundate the floor and wind around my legs, climb up my back and whisper fine words on my physique in my ear. I realize that this surrealist situation might not be a hallucination and that it is really hell down here.<\/p>\n

I consider what\u2019s around me, and I understand I am at the seventh floor: one floor to go. It\u2019s the worst one, a materialization of all the fears I internalized, the ones that I buried deep down so that they couldn\u2019t scare me again you have to face them and get rid of them<\/em>. Women. All extremely skinny, wearing sumptuous clothes, the ones you would expect on a fashion show; they are stunning and smile merrily. When they move too quickly, the fabric of their apparel moves and reveals a big, disgusting mouth in place of their stomach. There are tables of a never-ending length over which lie countless dishes, each one looking more succulent than the other. But I know by experience that they have no taste. They strut like proud peacocks and pretend to ignore what is on the tables; still, as soon as they approach the plates, their large mouths begin to yell in a senseless gibberish; the only words I can distinguish are ADDICTION and STARVATION. Their macabre stroll seems to be going on endlessly. I have to gather all my courage to pass through them and reach the last floor.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re almost there<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Eighth floor. It is freezing cold, whereas the previous rooms were rather overheated. I don\u2019t remember ever being here. The room is of a blinding immaculate white, the walls are padded and there are no couches, except for dirty mattresses, stained with unidentified substances. On them, the remains of what were once human individuals: livid, they produce long vociferation like beasts in agony; their white eyes and their mouth half open give them a dazed and disillusioned look. Long hair hangs over their scraggy shoulders; they remind me of ghouls. These human shells move so slowly they seem to be numbed by the cold atmosphere that prevails in here and it\u2019s sure the dope doesn\u2019t help them to be vivid either, still they are begging for more. There is only one armchair at the center of this scene of devastation, where sits the owner of this whole crushing system. Happily grinning from ear to ear, she\u2019s the one that distributes the drugs. At no point in time does she take any of these; but she takes a perverse pleasure in choosing who can get some, starving them until they\u2019re on the verge of dying, and only at this moment she gives them a phenomenal quantity, so that their next withdrawal symptoms torture them always more. She\u2019s exulting to see the vampires jostle weakly to get their dose, tearing each other apart to be the first to get it. She notices me, and I see in her look that she might know me; indeed, she extends her hand toward me. I see that it is full of appetizing little pills of all colors, the ones I\u2019ve been taking for years now, the ones I love, the ones that make me feel so mighty and thin, the ones that make me feel like I\u2019m in control of everything around me RESIST you have to resist otherwise she will win again and this time you will lose me forever<\/em> yet, curiously, I feel at peace and I don\u2019t want any. She\u2019s trying to persuade me to take them, She does not understand why I\u2019m not already swallowing them, and She begins to get angrier and angrier; at the same time, she becomes darker and darker while I\u2019m seeing the light again!<\/em> and tries to regain control over my body. I don\u2019t let Her. I have a nameless force helping me to resist Her assaults, all of my muscles tense up, every inch of my body is on alert, my brain is throbbing in order to purge the venom can you feel that you\u2019re coming back to your senses again? <\/em>my body is going to blow up, lava is running down my ears, tears are flowing down my face, and a long hoarse howling escapes through my lips.<\/p>\n

Little by little, the fog that permanently troubles my vision diminishes, while I see a black cloud slowly materializing itself at the corner of the room. A skeletal and slender silhouette is gradually outlined; it\u2019s faceless and has no hair, I can only distinguish her small breasts, and the prominent bones of her chest, ribs, and hips. Her long and thin fingers try one last time to catch me, but I stay stoic. She knows it\u2019s over. Gently, she curls up on the floor and begins to cry.
\nAt the back of the room, a door opens. Behind, the sky is blue.<\/p>\n

Open your eyes<\/em>.
\nLife can go on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image: “Depression #4 (standing at the window)”\u00a0by\u00a0ndanger\u00a0is licensed under\u00a0CC BY-SA 2.0 Source Author: Anonymous Content warning: this text has light mentions of eating disorders, anxiety, and drugs. you found Happiness in Darkness you found the Light in the Night you found Passion in Starvation \u00a0 what you didn\u2019t know is that you lost your Reason […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001998,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[37],"class_list":{"0":"post-1904","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-2021-spring","7":"tag-prose"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001998"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}