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.