Never say ever

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.

The Storm

You don’t have a choice.  This is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to come to terms with.  The narrative of our lives has always been one of choice, choose what flavour you want, choose who you want to look like, choose your path, choose your destiny.  You can be anything, do anything, go anywhere, as long as you want it bad enough and work even harder.  We trudge along this course in irons against unrelenting wind of circumstance, and despite our best efforts and undying unwillingness to accept the nature of this world, there is no stopping the storm, all you can do is brace yourself, and too often we trade vigilance for false comfort in thinking we have a say in any of this.

This is my sin.  My admission of guilt.  That I let myself get too comfortable in this beaming brightness to remember what the dark even looks like.  But the moon is as unstoppable as the sun, and eventually a reminder of its coming becomes a looming truth, a time come, a falling darkness.

I can’t kid myself, pretend like I didn’t see this coming.  I’ve always been one high up on the lookout knowing those rolling clouds will someday come for us, ready to scream and shout at the top of my lungs to warn us all to remember what is always waiting.  Even in my deepest ignorance there was a voice in my head screaming, dying to be heard, warning me that there wasn’t much time left.  But I was too scared to listen to him, to admit the truth he told.

I suppose I thought it was finally time to rest my guard, to lay this burden down on the ground, to tuck away my vigilance somewhere I know it would be waiting for me when I needed it.  My vision tunneled, my restless thoughts took ease, and that shimmering beautiful thing let me see myself in a light I’ve long forgotten.  Such a sight is one you get lost in, you forget yourself, the world around you dissolves into a void and all you have left is this beautiful golden shine, the very thing we fight so hard to find our whole lives.

The storm is clever though, it has nothing to get lost in, no love to cause it to dither, it only has time to lie in wait for moments like these, and it knows exactly when to bear down on you, when it thinks it can break you.

Some give up in its wake quickly, they bend and twist, they break and cower under its violent lashes.  Others stand up tall like a proud palm as if to say to these winds “give me your best shot”.  Both are fools, because sometimes the only way out, is to know when to run…