Undeserving

     Her heart screams at her, more shrieking than a banshee, and her mind demands she turn out the light. Smiles are too bright, eyes are too alive, and she needs something drab now to get her through.

     "Do you ever feel like things are too delighted? Like there is too much joy? Like the happiness is much too high?"

     Too much joy? How can she have too much joy? How ludicrous. How ridiculous. How inconsiderate of the mind. And yet...it seems not so far off. It may not be her who holds that joy, but all the same, there is too much of it and is it so wrong to want to snuff a little of it out?

     Because she has convinced herself that she is undeserving of two things.

     The first is unhappiness. She doesn't deserve to be unhappy because she has no good reason to be. There is nothing in her life to cause misery or depression. She should not be unhappy. Unhappiness is the result of some trick of the mind - some weakness of her thoughts.

     But she is unhappy.

     And therefore the second thing of which she is so undeserving is...happiness. Because why should she be happy if she is so undeservedly unhappy? She would dare to put herself on the level of those who have just cause for their emotions? Who does she think she is? No, if she dares to steal unhappiness from those who deserve it, she cannot have both. She does not deserve either. So she will be deprived of the one that is already out of her reach by some...weakness of her thoughts.

     Self-pity is its own form of conceitment, and she is bathing in it. And of course, with these - her own thoughts, trapped forever in the cages of her mind - she is ruined. She has given herself hopelessness, knowing full well that it is no way to live. Knowing full well as she falls, unable - or unwilling? - to grab the rope and pull herself up again.

     How far she has fallen.

          How low her spirits drown, choking, in murky mulch of despair.

     She is her own worst critic, far too biased, and far too unfair. That alone should revoke her right - her self-imposed ability - to judge her own mind, and yet-

     And yet.

     These excuses will be the literal death of her. She knows this. The figurative is seeping in - leeching from reality and infecting it. Changing things. But not her. Only burning these dangers more deeply into the lining of her soul. She should sew the seam between the two. Fix it. Fix this.

     And yet.