It Has Been Too Long

It has been too long. It has been much too long for you to still be here with me. I've done everything I can think of to discover your insidious little hiding spot and to expel you but, alas, to no avail. First, thinking that you were residing in my heart, I opened up my veins and tried to bleed you out. But you were not in my blood and now I am left with the scars to remind me of my failure. Perhaps in my gut, I thought. Maybe you were that pit I felt deept in my stomach everytime I thought of your face. But even after expelling all the contents of my stomach and I had become weak and ill you remained with me. And then I realized, of course, you were hidden deep within the confines of my brain. So I tried to write you out. I wrote. And I wrote. Pages upon pages. Essays, stories, poems. Pages upon pages upon pages. Every conceivable word combination and phrase I transferred from my mind to paper until there was not a single thought left to think. My mind was empty and broken. But still you were with me. Still I felt your presence somewhere inside of me. I realized then the one hiding place left that I had not searched. I realized then that you had buried yourself deep within my very soul. You were in there, folded away in some dark recess in that most untouchable part of my being. And so, lacking guidance or clarity, I dove into my own soul, hacking away at every loose bit of spirit and meaning that stood between myself and you. I cut and I slashed and I burned my way deeper and deeper until, at the very edge of sanity, I stood at the mouth of a cave. With nothing left to lose, I charged blindly into the abyss until I found you. I found you right where you had always been, where I had left you chained and manacled so long. For fear of losing you I had chained you to this cave, in the deepest, darkest part of my soul. So that you would always be with me. And then when you cried and you begged to be set free so that we both could live, when I could take that no more I had left. I left you in the cave and my mind, unable to conceive of what I had done, destroyed all memory of it. Yet still you had remained here, all this time, calling to me from the pit of my soul, begging still to be set free. Having found you again, I know I cannot let you go. I need you, but I cannot be here with you. I cannot see you like this. So I turn and leave. I leave the cave and I return to the world and I forget. But still you're with me. You've been with me too long and I cannot find you.