You are so weak. It’s almost comical how easy it is to manipulate you. All it takes is the slightest suggestion in the absence of information, and you lose control so easily… it’s pathetic, really. You are so naïve. You make it too easy. You let your captor and torturer speak softly to you, and you so easily abandon yourself; you are so quick to dismantle your army. That’s why you have me, though. To protect you, to guide you. You wouldn’t have survived this long without me. You know that, too, don’t you? Of course you do. I’m the only reason you’re alive, after all. You need me.

You are but a moth to the flame. I am your flame.

We are the spider and the fly. I may be the spider, and you the fly, but I wove my web just for you. Can’t you see that? It is a gift for you… our home. I will continue to weave it around you. We are locked in an eternal struggle, you and I. It is my duty and obligation to protect you, to advise you… to tell search for the truths behind the lies of others. To see and hear what you cannot. To fill in the gaps when you are lacking information. I will protect you. I will watch out for you. You will be safe, if you listen to me. These are the assurances that I whisper in your ear as you are drowning.

You are so easily enticed.

I know how fragile you are. How weak. It was so easy to coerce you into giving up your power… you of so little fortitude. I have prayed on your weakness and spoken to the deepest depths of your soul. No other voice on earth can verify your deepest fears. I have fed you your deepest fears on a silver platter… and you have eaten every last morsel. I have sweet-talked you into binding yourself into a chair in the middle of a cold, white box of a room. You trust me enough to let me talk you into this state… to talk you into submission. I am holding a leaking pot of poisoned water above your head. The drops are incessant. The timing is irregular. I can feel your discomfort. You never seem to notice that I am the one responsible for those erratic drops of poison dribbling on your small and upturned face. I can’t even look at you. I never will.

You are so enthralled by the web of lies I am spinning that you don’t even notice how the room is beginning to fill with water. You are beginning to fidget. Pathetic attempts at self-soothing. You plead with me to put an end to the droplets that are discordantly kissing your brow. Your words fall on deaf ears. You are trying so hard to be strong, to be brave, to keep your head above the water. You are trying to remember your quaint little strategies… but your best is not enough. It never has been.

The water rises and I hear your panic. The waves are lapping at your chin.

I can feel you shaking beneath me. Trembling. The water is rising, and I can sense the panic blooming from your chest. Your fear is nearly tangible. Choking. Your small voice is raising, its pitch entering an entirely new echelon of sound that one may alternatively describe as shrieking. I am trying my best to tune you out. Your feeble attempts to suppress the waves are amusing, to say the least. Picking at the skin around your nails, your “box breathing”, the tapping ritual you learned from an elder… you are trying so hard to anchor yourself against the storm. You are failing. You always do.

“You’ll get used to it”, I tell you. “It’s only temporary”. But even I cannot say how long temporary is. It’s more of an abstract idea than anything else. An ambiguous, half-assed promise. The whisper of an end. A maybe. I am expecting you to put blind faith in the process. To ignore your instincts. To tune out the sounds of your own screaming. Nobody is coming to save you. You are all alone. I am all you know. I am the only constant in your life.

The cycle is always the same. It is elemental even. The waters of overwhelm to drown you, the spark of panic in the darkness, the ignition of flame to protect yourself… and the grounding gravity of the consequences of your destruction. You are deeply submerged in the water now.

You will drown in the depths as we have a hundred thousand times.

“I am not drowning you,” I say. And I’m not – I’m only holding the pot. “The water is not my doing.” I am omitting to you that I also have a knife with which to cut your tethers. But an omission is not a lie… so long as you are not aware of it. You cannot be upset about something you have no knowledge of… or perhaps in our case, something you choose, pointedly, to ignore.

I tell you that this is a natural part of training. Of growth. That repeatedly picking at a scab so that it never heals will result in its healing twice as strong. A beautiful lie. You are so easily convinced that the only way to heal a wound is to keep pressing on it – to keep testing the integrity of the scab, of the scarring… I tell you that the cut is only bleeding because you have not cut it deep enough. I tell you that if you were stronger, it would not matter how many times I cut you, that the would would never bleed. If you were enough… you wouldn’t bleed at all. This is a lie of course. As the cliche goes, time purportedly heals all wounds. It is a crying shame for you, I suppose, that you will never receive the grace of time to let the wound heal in the first place. I will make sure of that.

I can hear your muffled screams. I feel your accusing eyes on my face, scanning, searching for the reassurance and the safety that I will never give you. You will never be able to discern reality from the web. You do not fully trust me, and yet you will never be able to ignore me. You can’t even trust yourself.

I will never give you the security and validation that you are searching for so desperately. I feel your cold hands grasping at my clothes. I hear your pathetic begging for me to look at you. To save you. Begging for a sign. You need me, so desperately. How could you ever survive without me? You can’t even defend yourself against me… poor, pathetic, broken thing.

I continue to whisper into your ear like a piece of flint striking steel to ignite the sparks of panic. I will stoke the flames as they engulf you. I will watch you set yourself on fire at the slightest suggestion of a word… and then I will abandon you, as I always have, to burn down every bridge and building and body in your way. I have never stopped you before, and I never will. Your self-destruction is beautiful you see, like a phoenix’s brilliant death, and I am captivated by it. You will burn yourself and everything you love into ash… and then we will start again. This is our way.

The flames are licking your body, a dull blue in the dark of the water. You are drowning. The outside voices have been suppressed. You are alone. There is nobody here to save you. They can’t even hear you. I am holding you down, in the darkness, trapping you there. I encourage you to give in… to let the fire out. I want you to give in to the fear, to the anger. I tell you it’s for your own best interest.. I love to lie to you. Your perception of reality is so easily distorted, isn’t it?

I tell you that this is exposure therapy. I tell you half-truths. The more frequently you set yourself on fire, the less it will burn (as you will be ash, and there will be no more fuel). The more you cut yourself, the less you will bleed (as there will be no blood left to shed). I tell that if you were stronger, if you had more value, if you were enough, then there would be no need to drown you. To force you to start over. You love letting that little fire bird out of it’s cage, don’t you?

“I’m doing this for you, can’t you see that?” I tell you. “Don’t you trust me?”

I have convinced you that I am the only voice who can help you. I am the voice of True Reason. I am the only beacon in the night. I would never lie to you, little one… I tell you that I tell you that I am protecting you, that I will never abandon you, that you can trust me… But can you? How could you ever truly trust the voice who is behind the orchestration of your misery?

Poor girl… you can’t even trust yourself.

You have been engulfed by the flames. You are drowning, and burning, and bound. I have isolated you. In the darkness, you are alone, and I am all you have. I have been lying to you for so long that sometimes even I forget what I’m doing this for.

I will never abandon you.

But I will force you to abandon yourself.