A Xanax Noir

It’s late. The house hums softly, the fans and air filters making the room feel like it’s breathing. I check in: chest rising, falling. Left arm, right arm. Thoughts. Feelings. I’m not those things, though. I’m just the one watching.

I grab the remote, flip through channels. Nothing sticks. The unease returns, like it always does. I know it well by now. That vague sense of needing to escape something unnameable. I pick up a book, read the same line three times, and set it down. I pace.

It waits for me, night after night. As the world quiets, it lingers in the background, not demanding and always present. I’ve never seen it directly, but I’ve felt it there, on the edges of thought. I’ve avoided it for years. Covered it with distractions, enough to forget it sometimes. But it never really leaves.

It waits for me, night after night. As the world quiets, it lingers in the background, not demanding, but always present.

I’ve never wanted to look too deep, afraid of what I’ll find. Afraid of pulling back the layers and discovering something I can’t handle. Some hole I can’t crawl out of.

But tonight? Tonight, I’m going in.

The few Xanax I took to dull the anxiety are a thin veil, but it doesn’t matter. I close my eyes and let myself sink deeper than ever before. It’s cold here. Dark. But I keep going. I need to understand.

People say they’re afraid of the ocean because of what might lurk beneath the surface. For me, monsters would be a comfort. It’s the nothing that terrifies me. The expanse of empty water, miles of void stretching below. I fear that.

And that’s what I find in the pit.

It stretches out before me, vast and overwhelming, like standing at the edge of a black, churning sea. The kind of sea that pulls with its own gravity and dares you to step closer. It’s not the threat of what might rise from its depths. It’s the enormity of the void—the sheer scale of it. That suffocating awareness of how small and fragile I am.

My heart pounds in my chest. This isn’t a pit. It’s a precipice over something endless, ancient, and patient. The nothingness is vast and indifferent, and could swallow me whole if I let it. Is this the nothingness Buddhists seek? Is the nothingness Nirvana? Fucking terrifying if you ask me.

It pulls at me, presses in from all sides. It’s a part of me, this nothing. Always has been. But now I’m staring right into it, observing its full breadth for the first time.

And then—a flicker. Not hope, not peace, but something more simple: If it’s nothing, then it can’t hurt me, can it?

There’s no battle here, no monster waiting to devour. Just a deep, quiet space where everything and nothing coexist.

And then—a flicker. Not hope, not peace, but something more simple: If it’s nothing, then it can’t hurt me, can it?

I open my eyes. The room comes back slowly, the edges of the void still faint in the corners of my mind. But I’m not drowning in it. It’s part of me, part of everything, and for tonight, that’s enough.