Matter Of Heritage

A letter

Dearest Uncle Sean

I inherited the darkness from my mother, and her mother before her, and so on and so forth.
All the women in my family have some form of the darkness.
My mother heard voices in her head, telling her to do things that a person of her naturally gentle nature would normally never think of doing.
It starts when we are triggered. Mum's trigger was the death of her sister and husband in a freak car accident just outside our house.
My trigger came later on in my life, a couple years after the accident and a couple years before the day in which everything would change because of the darkness.
My trigger caused me to split into two. One who is shy and kind, caring and gentle. Another who is angry and helpless, sorrowful and lost all at once.
I do not see the other half of me when I am not it, but I feel it, like a ghost standing just around the farthest corner of my mind.
It taunts me constantly, the knowledge that something is not right in my mind but that I can never change it or somehow make it go away.
I talked to my mother about it once, at the large grey mental asylum she now calls home. It was an uneventful visit up until I told her about the other half of me.
She sat me down and explained to me simply that It was perfectly normal in our family to have this sort of thing going on, that it was like a heritage of sorts. Going back to our great ancestors, all the women in our family had problems of this nature. She said I should keep it to myself lest I end up rooming with her for the rest of my life.
I left shortly after that, I have not returned since.
I Feel the other half of me, it's whispers echo in my present mind almost constantly. I cannot make sense of the echoes, but I sense they are things one does not speak aloud in the presence of respected company.
Other people try to help me glue myself back together, but I fear it is of no use as they do not truly understand the lengths of which the darkness has overtaken my mind.
I find myself waking up in unknown places and know instantly that my other half has taken control for as long as a month or two.
The day it first took over was the eve of my eighteenth birthday. The stress pool of what was to come coupled with the wasp infested pit of the past caused me to lose control for what felt like a millisecond but was actually a handful of dark hours after which I awoke smeared with blood that was and was not my own, a scarlet kitchen knife clenched in my hand.
It took me only a few moments to realise the blood which was not my own was that of my boy friend at the time.
Despite all my efforts, he did not survive. That was the day the darkness changed everything.
Instead of turning myself in to the men in blue I ran away, escaping with mere shreds of a normal mind and a few clothes from my room.
I have been running for months now, a war for dominance constantly raging between my two halves.
It has gone on too long. When I finish writing this letter I will e-mail it to you back home and shortly after I will take my own life in a manner that is less than satisfactory but completely necessary to bring peace to what exists of my original mind and justice for all those whom my other half has harmed.

-Ailey