MY heart was racing in my chest as sharply as all the pain at once. It was barely noticeable that I was finishing everything just a few seconds ago. I was stuck in an in-between world.

A hair-out of waking up and continuing to dream, which took away tons of air from me and I felt like everything I picked up unconditionally melted away.

It was always the same dream that haunts me after I so shamelessly close my eyes, thinking that I can find refuge from reality in sleep. But it's always the same faces that look down on me and whose facades start to laugh.

A laugh so shattering that it goes through my bones as heat rises to my cheeks, my pulse quickens and I think how it is possible for such cruelty to exist in an even crueler world.

So many doubts mixed with hatred and pity for it that there are moments that don't last, but they creep through your veins up into your head and into your heart because they are about to take root. They try to stay, and once they hold you tightly in their fingers, things lose their color and the person in the mirror loses that once-firm smile in a matter of seconds in the form of a flap of wings.

There is always this pain that hits me as soon as I wake up. I'm never prepared, there's never any way I can put my hands above my head to maybe deflect a blow.

Because if I was honest, with myself and those around me, my moments were immersed in such hopelessness that I didn't want to live anymore.

And I even less wanted that to be my only memory. All these bad things. Because like every other light around me, my name was all that was left to me. Only there was a huge difference.

With my name came these nightmares that never seem to end even when I'm awake, leaving me stuck in a state of fear. A fear that became so much more.

Always reaching out to someone because you want to belong, because you want to laugh, because you want to talk. Because I'd rather fucking live than die in fear. When all you can do is answer, but as soon as questions arise in your mind, fearful thoughts squeeze through.

A dilemma that seems impenetrable and a hell so small that it only fits in your own head.

No, don't say that.

What if they think you're completely stupid?

They'll just laugh at you, Melanie.

What you're trying to do is embarrassing, you can't do that.

Hide, adapt and woe betide you!

You're so pathetic, look at you.

Thankfully there are a few gladers here that I can get by with. Who don't mind remaining silent and simply exchanging a silent smile as a means of communication. Zart, for example.

Sometimes I catch myself taking a breath, my lips parting so weightlessly until heat spreads everywhere and a rush of hot water rushes through my body, causing thoughts that had formed sentences to collapse and I- I suffocate everything.

If you open up, will they accept you for who you are, Mel?

I miss the feeling of freedom. I know what it means and the context in which this perception occurred, but I don't remember ever feeling it between my organs.

To have ever felt a bright veil shining in the form of light in the heart - that boundaries are not available. Free from my annoying thoughts, which always seem like foreign bodies to me on good days. Free from the nightmares. Be free from this.

Why was I even here? Trapped - the simple opposite of being free - in this hellish glade, which was beautiful when the sun's rays crept over the walls of the maze on warm days, but destroyed everything when at night, between the crackling of the campfire, the deafening screams of the ... Griever could be heard.

Between all the fleeting seconds of my presence in the glade, pitch-black thoughts circled within me, so strange that they expressed desires that stemmed from a questionable hopelessness.

When there was no way forward, everything was going in circles, and then suddenly something appeared that seemed possible. Who wouldn't take it? Who wouldn't wonder if it was better to just disappear? Forever.

Often, when I thought about it again, Newt would appear from somewhere around the corner. Like an angelic sign that there was so much white light. Something pure that I could work on because experiences and happiness were planned for me that I just were about to waste.

Sometimes I could believe, so unrealistically, that he could perhaps sense what was going on in my simple, self-destructive aura.

I wanted to let him know everything.

I wanted Newt to know everything.

That he can hear every tiny thread of thought, no matter how dark. But I didn't want to talk. I didn't want to speak because I was afraid.

There was so much fear in me

that I thought it was rising inside me

like sea levels are rising

due to global warming

and an end is approaching

that is so inevitable,

but you still try to

e s c a p e.