One Step Further

"I tried."

I don't think I could utter a more bitter sentence. When you come face to face with yourself, admitting that you're a failure is never easy. I stared long and hard at the glaring eyes in the mirror, but they only betrayed what I knew to be true. "You're a masterpiece, a beautiful farce", they stated. I squinted and shook my head violently. Never! Perish the thought. I tried to tell them who I really was, but I had no answer.

Who am I?

I ask this question from the depths of my familiar insanity. In all eccentricity, who am I deep inside? I wish I could laugh it off, I wish I could make it go away. I created a little world for me, I blurred the lines between reality and fiction. Reality is so painful, I escaped it but now I can't understand it. Reality, my old enemy, only allows me enough time to rise to my feet before it knocks me down with a cackle.

But I am so goddamn stubborn. I can never give in, I can never let it win. I'll flail my arms wildly and grasp at any lifeline, I'll throw punches at the largest of all monsters; though my energy is sapped, though I breathed my last breath ages ago.

See me through the eyes of this world and it's people. I am a stranger here. I cannot fit in, not even with professed eccentrics. I laugh and they smile. I open my mouth and they listen. But all their interest is pretentious, all their love is fake, their masks make me afraid, and their plastic smiles haunt me.

I believed in you. You never failed to let me down. I continued to hope, I continued to put my trust in you. You must know this, you must enjoy watching me fall, you must enjoy watching me suffer and bleed. You take advantage of my simple faith, innocence and naiveness. You profess to love me, you say "Come, we will care for you." But now I'm disgusted with you. I don't know if I'll ever break free from your cruel grasp. You have me chained to you through simple hope, through the dream that one day you will change. But all I've ever known you to be is abusive. You've wounded me beyond belief, you've tortured me with glee, and you hardly realize, you could hardly care. I love you and I don't know why; you, humanity.

I thirst for true love, and while I know the location of the source, I have failed to open the floodgates. I beat these gates, I screamed at them to open; I held lonely vigils next to them, hoping that they will have mercy on me. It was then that I realized that I was the one who held the key, and yet I refused to open the gates; for I feared I would drown. I did not tend to my wounds, for I was afraid of the initial sting. But now, I clench that key; I grit my teeth as I let that healing balm sear my skin and close my wounds.

There's a beautiful place not too far from here, one can reach it two ways: honorably, or dishonorably. The easiest way out is dishonorable, and it holds it's temptation. But when looked at in perspective, I'd rather live in pain and die a hero than die a coward and live in shame.

There is a light that shines through the darkness, and I follow. I have nothing else. If my existence is worth anything, if I can rise above the mockery that I am, it will have been because I've followed that light.

I've been stripped bare. Any coverings I throw over myself are seared by that light. Anything I hold on too tightly to becomes ashes before me. The light is jealous, it will have no other cheap imitations before me. I mourn these things, but I must continue. The light will not wait.

You may ask, why do I follow that light, seeing as it costs me everything? Because that light is everything. Anything else is worthless. They're all trinkets, fit only for the fire. That light is my comfort, it is my strength, it is my refuge, it is clarity in a world of insanity.

Every step I take leads me further into pain; every new path is rife with yet more obstacles. I hold not in high regard what I am, but what I shall become when this life is over. If I can endure yet another step, then maybe, just maybe, I have become that man.

Complete the work you have started, Lord. Forgive my reluctance. Forgive my hesitation. I tried, but I tried on my own, in my weak and failing flesh. I can see that you love me, for you've poured so much into me, and put love and patience into my breakings. Now, as I watch you work, I can only anticipate the results.