Despair

The soft ember lamp warmed a small corner of the office and caressed his otherwise hardened and tired face with a delicate but meaningful stroke that painted his shadow into existence against the cluttered wall to his side.

His head was barely above the waterline and the cold water had already reached his lungs. Each breath was rushed and panicked, and increasingly desperate.

He desired the fiery and deep touch of a sharp knife; the twisting torment and intensity of something other than reality.

How could it be that this life of his had turned out to be nothing more than a daily display of mimicry and acting to appease and to belong, and yet the result was the slow decay and torturous waste of standing in a sandstorm of judgment?

His curse of isolation was set against an accord of deep and painful feeling; of emotions to the extreme, both highs and lows - all of which burned when felt alongside the everlonging need for understanding and connection.

Pen touched paper in an attempt to give words and meaning to the torment and struggles, but oh, the irony if such words are never read?

To stand at the horizon point, drawn in by invisible threads that transcend all rhyme and reason, to look and see and feel the inevitability of the truest surrender in the universe that would result in such a perfect and serene implosion to which there would be no return - and knowing that such joining would forever be out of reach.

The pen did not move.

His wildest and deepest insecurities would continuously repeat and plague him; a self fulfilling prophecy in the truest sense.

To find oneself is the aim which we set ourselves, and yet, to reach the answer and to discover that one’s incompatibility is not just a curse for oneself but also the cause of grief and hurt to all of those who would look to love is a cruel irony and a bitter and difficult truth to hold onto.

On one hand, the option to set fire to all that you are to give warmth to those around you in the attempt for connection - to give value for others, to prove your worth by sacrificing everything, to know that such a path leads to slow and painful death, agony and silent suffering on a daily basis.

The other is the acceptance of oneself and the acceptance of the pathetic, the weak, the incompatible, the incapable, the unlovable. Such a path is isolation, a world without connection; it is a path of honesty, of shunning the normal and the expected in the name of authenticity and sanity.

Author’s Note: This is a heavy piece. I find it important and interesting to explore the darker moments whilst also making the most of the cosy sanctuary of other posts.