Darkness

I wander through this void, the darkness of my own soul, searching, looking, feeling around for something to grab onto, anything to hold. There is nothing. In the distance I hear someone weeping. It is my own cry. I try to find myself, to comfort myself, but the cry is far too distant and this world is far too dark. I am lost in my own darkness.
I see a light before me, like the sun shining through, and I run towards it. It is forever out of reach and by the time I get to where I thought it was, it has vanished.
The cry, my cry, echoes off of unseen walls. I spend what seems like an eternity searching for the source of my pain until I realize that the darkness hindering my search is the very source of my despair.
In the dark, something grabs me. I feel it pulling me down. Claws tear at me, fists punch me, feet kick me, and my painful screams only echo across the chasm. I try to fight back, to free myself, but my futile attempts only seem to intensify my torture.
"What have I done to deserve this?" I cry out, although something tells me that I deserve far worse.
The only response I get is laughter. Thousands of voices, hideous, demonic, laughing as I am left to die in my own wicked heart.
I try to stand, but cannot. I crawl on my belly across what feels like broken glass and nails. Every moment is an eternity, every movement brings more pain.
I go on like this for minutes, hours, years, centuries- I don't know. The only thing that I do know is that when I can finally stand and walk again I can no longer remember if I have ever done so before. My whole existence, and every memory, is the pain.
Yet, in the distance, I see the light again, so far away, yet seeming so close. I hurry towards it as fast as my aching body and dark soul will permit, but with every step I get farther and farther away.
Now, my physical pain has left me, but my emotional agony is greater. The crying in the distance is closer, louder, and more intense. It comes nearer to me every second until it reaches me. I am covered with my own misery. My own tears overtake me and I begin to weep.
It's long before this dark place is flooded with my very tears. I am drowning. The salty sorrow that engulfs me pulls me down and will not release me. I try to scream, but the echoes just mock me.
I try to stay afloat, to keep my head above the flood, but all the emptiness I had collected weighs me down.
"Oh my God!" I scream. "What have I become?"
I sink.
I hit bottom.
I give up.
I decide to lay there until I drown to death in the darkness. Death would be a release. I have no idea how deep the flood of tears is, but it covers me and it would take all of my strength to reach the surface.
Just as my life is about to leave me, I see the light again, distorted and dimmed by my tears, yet never brighter, never so clear. I push myself off the bottom and swim as hard as I can to try to reach the surface of the flood.
It takes forever, but my entire mind, heart, and strength are focused on that beautiful light.
I am not strong enough to get out of the sea of tears. I realize that no matter how hard I push myself, my efforts will be in vain. I will never reach the surface, never know the light, and never be free from this horrible place that is my own dark soul. In desperation, I stop trying; merely holding my fingers out towards the light that is forever just beyond my reach, as if by reaching towards the light in my dying moment, I may somehow enter into it.
Then a hand reaches into the water and grasps mine. Before it closes around my fingers I see that this hand is torn and wounded. Somehow I know that I caused that wound. The hand pulls me up. When I come out of the salty water gasping for breath, I simply stare up into the brightness.
The Man who has pulled me out speaks to me with a voice so beautiful, so indescribably kind and full of love and compassion. The sound of this voice instantly dries the tears that had soaked me. It fills me with hope, with faith, with a sense of freedom, and the four little words He speaks put an end to all of my sufferings.
"Come home, my child."