If you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you. I know this to be true, even if the abyss is not necessarily anything outside myself. The abyss is simply, The Abyss. It is not within me or without me, it is just being. And I do gaze into it. I don't really take this to mean that I will become like my hates or enemies, as I believe that I have always been what I hate- my own worst enemy. I take this to say that The Abyss, for however long I look into it, also looks into me. It leaves marks on my soul; deep gouges made with stained black talons. The Abyss is many things, and also nothing at the same time. It is darkness, that is a given, it is also The End. It is The Apocalypse, it is The End of Time. The Abyss is the complete-stop-of-everything. Some people even believe that the surging water-deep of a literal abyss is Hell itself, though I think I know better. The Abyss is not Hell, because when your soul is released from your vessel, and you of course have committed sin, you do not go to The Abyss. Your soul does not forever reside in the Nothingness of The Abyss, your soul does not belong to it unless it belongs to you. Even so, after looking into The Abyss for a long period of time, it is hard to shake the feeling of its eyes on you. It can linger for days, and the restless, dreamless state that those eyes leave you in is hard to leave behind. As someone who is constantly staring into The Abyss, I find that it never quite leaves me. It's almost as if The Abyss has left some part of it inside me, within my very being. I can't hope to root it out without never seeing into The Abyss ever again, and I don't imagine that will happen any time soon. The Abyss has been a... comfort to me. The promise of Nothingness, of simply Not Being, has always appealed to me. This existence of mine has not been an easy one, but it has been growing on me. Even with the promise of Nothingness, I think that I will try and stay Existing for as long as I can. Existing has its perks of course. I get to think and feel and experience, and part of that Feeling is Love, which I believe may be the most important one of all. What is there, without Love?
That, I believe, is what The Abyss actually is. Lack of Love.
So I thought of this while reading Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor because a character quoted Frederick Nietzche and his famous quotation: "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee." This is a kind of... stream-of-consciousness thing that I don't really know what to do with, so I decided to post it here so it may inspire someone else to think about reality in a way different from their belief.
