But it's the pain in my chest, the eternal ache that threatens to pull me under with its suffocating weight, that I can't shake. It's haunting in its omnipresence. Through laughter, joy, excitement and the darkness. The dread. The emptiness. It would be a numbness but for the crushing pain that paralyses my tongue and deprives my screams their ******, traumatic entrance to the world as they rip from my throat. It's a good thing too, that forcible, formidable silence. I don't think I would know how to stop screaming if I let one pass my lips. Such a damning fate it is, to feel so wholly. Visceral and excruciating. Endless and final. To feel nothing at all, though, would not save me from the worst of it. The feeling I flee from, the one that pushes me to chase down any other emotion and clasp it tight in my heart, regardless of hurt. Anything is better than loneliness.