Challenge Submission 45 years and my life is Still

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Challenge Submission 45 years and my life is Still

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Today 3:48 PM
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16
Age
45
Pronouns
He HIm
Time.

Its measured in relative units. Its held up as the thing you need SAVE but also make the most of. But the sad part is, you only realize you needed to make the most of the time you didn't save, when its already too late.
One foot in front of the other. That's what they tell you to keep going, but they don't tell you that you won't have shoes and the road will be covered in glass. You only find that out when you have no choice but to leave now. I put one foot in front of the other because there is simply nothing else left to do.

I can't ask the person to my left to carry me anymore. They stopped walking a while ago. Sometimes I wonder if I should have. For I once counted all the family I had lost, now I count the family that remains.

We aren't taught to deal with loss in modern society. We are taught how to ask for help after the fact. But even that can seem as a weakness to others, so we repress, regress, repent, repeat.

And now I consider the fork that lay before me. A break from the walk? A nap? Hibernation perhaps? Time was supposed to heal all wounds, but instead its just a scab on top of the hole left in your soul when you realize the one constant in your life has disappeared.

Or perhaps, a new path. A new home; a new start? If we have nothing left to run away from, are we truly running away?

No no, the old path. Bumpy, full of potholes. But some some of the drivers look familiar and feel warm.

But we can't have them all. I want them all. I want to rest. I want to see the rest of the world. And I'd like to know I wasn't left alone.

But I am. I'm alone when surrounded by strangers and I'm alone when surrounded by friends. I bob in the river up and down, a buoy marking a place where happiness once lived, but now its just a marker. Its just a marker.

I stare up at the top of the mountain, ages away, sigh, and keep walking. I walk the same road as those before me, and watch as they all drive off the side. I warn them and scream and cry out but no one hears. I just watch them drive off the road, over and over. And endless loop of sorrow that I'll never escape. The scab hard but ready to open again with the slightest itch.

It may not have been your fault. It may not have been mine. Maybe I wasn't supposed to survive. Maybe this is my Jacobs Ladder. Its almost a blessed dream, thinking I could have forgone all the years without you. I could have escaped the pain, the emptiness, the mocking, the self doubt. I could have stayed in your arms, clung to your stomach, forever the scared little boy that didn't know how to step outside and leave the home.

I watch you leave again and again as others leave. Everyone I cling to rips away from my clutches, ignoring my screams. I start clinging to anything that moves just to know I still matter. I start clinging to the past to remember I still existed. I cling to the future in the hopes that it won't slip away from me, and if possible, will actually seem worth it.

Because that's the real irony isn't it. Once you lose enough people, you wonder if it could possibly be worth it again. When you have no one to turn to and say, "Hey, look what I did", whats the point of 'did'ing the thing in the first place. Priorities change, time speeds up as the relative yard stick gets bigger, and you want more than anything to just say....

"I'm sorry."

"45 years... " I stare into the final climb ahead of me, "and my life is still, trying to get up that great big hill".
I cry.
I wait.
I scream.
"What's going on?"

I can't hold on much longer, and frankly don't want to. Why stay on a ride everyones hopped off of already? I see a stranger ahead and excitedly stop to talk, but they speak another language, from another time, from another land. And the hole in my heart grows larger.

And I met someone who reminded me of you, but you weren't there to approve, so i ruined that too.

I can't help it anymore as I cry sometimes when I'm lying in bed, but it doesn't all come out. It all stays in my head. Peace has lost and anxiety has won. Success has failed and doubt has triumphed.

Road work ahead. I hate road work. Those younger than me can deal with it. I have no spare tire if I break down, and there's an exit just before. Maybe I'll finally smile again, when I see you open the door.










4 non-blondes - What's Up [excerpt]

And so I cry sometimes when I'm lying in bed
Just to get it all out what's in my head
And I, I am feeling a little peculiar
And so I wake in the morning and I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream from the top of my lungs
"What's going on?"
 
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