The Valley of Despair

Nothing here was visible, it was all covered in thick, dark, fog. This is the place where my deepest horrors lived. This is where my past haunted me. In this place it hurt to breathe. My legs became the same as lead, great strength was required to put one foot in front of the other. I could swear the fog here was laced with something. Something that took away the will to live.... Or maybe it was the memories that were simply haunting me.
Exhaustion seeped from every limb in my body, and my head pounded behind my eyes.
When I closed my eyes to dismiss the frightening terrain in front of me, all I saw was deeper darkness.
Here, my thoughts couldn't save me.
Here, I had no will to sing a song to pass the time, I didn't even have the desire to stay conscious. To lay down and give up would be a relief, but I know if I lay to rest, then he will come.
The beast.
If I were to rest my weary, aching head... then he would devour me. The warm dark fog would cover me as a seed of death was planted in my mind. But then, would that be so bad?
Who would miss me? Would anyone care?
I seem to be the instigator of arguments and disagreements in the first place, who would mind if he finally won?
Crawl.
Keep crawling.
My hands and knees covered in scrapes, but I have to keep moving.
The torment never seems to cease, and my mind was continually weighing heavier. My soul had no fight inside, it was beginning to wither away.
The cliffs above me, as I crawled towards what I thought to be a glimmer of light, began to take form.
These weren't cliffs.
These were embodiments of the voices in my head.
I couldn't be blessed with silence in this hellish place. Instead, the cliffs spoke whispers into my soul.
"You're not worth it, your a fake....."
"You're not of value, no one loves you..."
"Your core beliefs are bogus, everything you know is a lie."
"You're the biggest hypocrite, how could God love you?"
I clenched my eyes and tried to shut the voices out of my head by screaming at the top of my lungs, but there was no noise emitted, my lungs had given out. My nails scraped the side of my head as my hands tried to shut out the voices.
My body and my mind were against me.
This, this was the valley of despair.
I'd been here before. Every year when the sun went down, and the days grew long, I came here.
This was a desolate place. No matter what path I took on my journey, I always seemed to come back to the same place....
Which seemed altogether, too strange.
In a journey towards the light, how is it I kept coming here?
Every year my path took me back, I'm beginning to think I'm walking in circles...

That's when it hit me. I couldn't give up. I'd gotten through this before... but I'd never been alone....
It was then I realized someone was with me. Instead of crawling, I let him carry me.
We made it through.
Instead of whispers of hate, there were whispers of kindness.
There was the sound of victory in his voice, and he told me he'd been here before.
When we reached the other side, he showed me his wounds in his hands.
He told me that though we may encounter this place again, never to worry.
It is finished.