[source pixabay.com]
The lightning crackled, the sky turned black except for the white hot bolts streaking through the sky, casting the lonely figure of a skeletal tree into shadows.
I found myself faced confronted with this scene that silently screamed fear and anxiety so loudly that my ears rang out with the pain and anguish, completely bewildered as to where I was.
I felt my heart screaming in pain as through the silence of the night the eerie sound of crying can be heard, the sound sending chills down the back of my spine. I looked around, more like frantically searching out details around me each time the lightning hit, to be faced with nothing but darkness, lightning and the sound of crying.
Stepping backwards, each patch of the dry earth, desperate for rain cracking under my feet, my bare feet. I could feel the earth tremble with each lightning bolt as if the fear in me was somehow transferring to the very ground beneath me.
The crying grew louder, drowning out even the thunder as it picked up intensity and I did what any sane woman would do, I turned and I ran, away from the agony, the fear and the pain that the crying caused within me.
Picking up speed, glancing behind me in fear, I missed the danger right in front of me as I ran into what felt like a solid wall of water.
In my dazed state I looked straight into the face of that which scared me nearly to death. The figure of a woman dressed in white, devoid of all recognisable feature, wailing and crying her agony of loss, the sound loud enough for me to not hear even the cracks of the thunder above my head.
As I looked into this crying woman's eyes, her tears forming a cloak that swirled around her, I felt it, and I knew it deep inside my deepest soul. She was not some figure walking the world, unknown and alone, I knew her, I knew her all to well.
She, the face devoid of happiness, unrecognisable features was me, the parts of me I hid away, the agony and the despair. The loneliness, the grief and feeling completely despondent. Those parts of me that I would not let anyone see for the fear of rejection and abandonement.
I am She and She is I, the very face of those ugly things the world should never see