It’s been raining for months. I see it when I look out my window. I see it when I close my eyes and look inside myself. I wait eagerly for the sun. I long for its warmth and its herald of hope. A gentle reminder that the storm can’t last forever. Alas, as the weather outside competes for my sense of being, so do I struggle to outlast the storms that rage within me. Must I endure them simply by holding on for dear life? Or do I somehow have power over this madness?
Without a doubt, there is this part of me that believes I have the power to shape my reality. My fate is not sealed. It is instead the product of my thoughts, feelings, and decisions and perhaps, some supernatural force which I cannot explain but can harness. I seem to fight onward for that which I believe exists but I have not yet seen. Perhaps something like faith in what I hope will transpire. In the midst of battle though, I look around and see the carnage of the battlefield. The skies are grey. The enemy seems to grow fiercer. In these moments I can only ask myself what I am fighting for. I cannot see it now. It seems so far out of
I can’t help but wonder, if I had not looked at my surroundings on the battlefield and despaired but instead, pressed onward in faith, that the land I sought was merely on the other side of this battle—that if only I had pressed on just a little longer, I would finally arrive in this “promised land”. Until the day I push onward without looking behind me, I may never know. I struggle to understand why it is so hard to make this push.
I wish I didn’t feel so deeply. It has always made it so difficult to process life. Everything brings such emotion—such overpowering, all-encompassing emotion. Whether it be good or bad, it is no less terrifying and this powerful ability to feel has dominated every aspect of my life since long before I even realized this to be true. All I want, all I crave—all my heart aches for is freedom from such things—for peace and quietness like the flow of a gentle stream, in the bed of a forest kissed by summer’s warmth. To sit next to the water and watch it meet the shore like two old friends who have been reunited after years apart. It is the calming of my inner world that I seek most in life as this inner world seems to shape my outer one. So now I wonder what I could accomplish if I become the master of the universe within me. Would I then be the master of the universe outside of me?
I once feared change but now, it is all I crave. Not in the way that I once thought it had to be. I thought I needed to change my outer world to reach that which I desired but the truth was that I needed to change within. As time goes on, I learn more and more that everything begins inward out and not outward in. I ache to break free of the way that I’ve felt. I hate how emotion can dictate my life. Entangled in this ocean of feeling also harbors the web of fear, pain, and addiction that hides in the depths. It masks itself to hide its true identity from me but I know it is there. I can feel the whispers of these shadows and the deception on their breath. They do not want me to reach the promised land. They do not want me to change. They only want me to succumb. They want only to see my demise. Their words often sound like comfort, if it not for the alarm within my soul that lifts the veil and reveals these monsters for what they really are.
I’ve been slipping these past weeks. I can feel my grip loosening. I fear that I am falling back into that which I have tirelessly tried to escape. Despite that, I can still feel the fighter within me. Always restless and never