It never ends, but that’s the point isn’t
it?
I often find myself at odds with the
sincere inability to reconcile these two opposing forces, the want for a future
and the want for the pain to stop. You can’t have both, and this is why we
sling our burdens over our shoulders and carry them with us into these lonely
nights. You either let the weight grind
you down until it breaks you, until you can’t take it anymore and just give up,
or you grow stronger from bearing it until you can’t feel its gravity anymore.
It’s far too easy to give up, to just let
your defeat become your end. This is why
so many lose themselves, because the way out is painful and difficult. I suppose I’ve always made things harder on
myself than I have to, so needless to say I’ve prepared myself well for what
lies ahead, but it never gets any easier, and it never gets any less terrifying
than to walk the road into the darkness on your own.
This is the price of redemption though, the
price of adventure and discovery. And to
say no to that is to give up on the amazing gift we’ve been given to be a part
of this ride through the cosmos. I keep
reminding myself of this as often as I can, a mantra to distract me from what
can sometimes feel like the crushing weight of my most profound fears.
You can let the terror of the dark paralyze
you, let the bumps in the night stop you dead in your tracks while you sweat
bullets and wait for something awful to come out and grab you. Or you can lose yourself in the void, let it
take you until you become that bump in the night, that terrifying memory of the
things we dream up in the blackness.
Or you can be the terror, the thing the
dark is afraid of letting in. A lost boy
holding out the hot coals of his burning desire to light the way. You can demand that this future has your name
on it, insist that it belongs to you and no matter how hard this world tries to
take that away the fight will only come to an end when I find mine.