Dilemma

Play of the conscience.. (contest entry)

Option 5:
Make notes on what happens or occurs to you for a limited amount of time, then make something of it mix reality with fiction, observe the big things, create the small things.

There are times when you read books and think you understand feelings. You're empathic then, sure. But still, you don't know how *exactly* you feel when you think you know how you'd feel. Especially those times when you feel burdened, sad, or guilty. Like someone is holding your heart and squeezing it, harder and harder by the minute, just enough that you feel suffocated but don't die. This is the term, "My heart feels heavy." You've read this phrase enough time in books to puke and ban it from the world for authors to be cliché. But that's exactly how I feel.

I decided to take evening walks. And they were going just fine until the other day, when I walked so fast that my right leg started swelling up. It's a play of the conscience when you decide to stop and not hurt yourself at the same time when this teeny voice creeps inside the back of your mind egging you to walk on and on, faster and faster, because you deserve to push yourself into punishment for the grief you've caused to those about whom you care. Or thought you did. But all you end up being, even with the image of the kindest, angelic person on this earth, is selfish. Life-instict, no?

I have wings, I believe, unused however. Perhaps, I don't want to use it, yet. For fear of them being ripped apart. I know. It's childishly coward to make presumptions about your own supposed destiny when you can't even be bold enough to try once. It's just that once your shell breaks and you're exposed to the world all of a sudden, it takes you time to drink it all in. And all you do is sit there on the ground hugging the broken pieces, trying to fix them back together as if life were just playing a trick on you and wanted to see if you could complete the puzzle at all: shattered pottery can't be put back. You have to start over. The staggering truth about not being able to piece them back lingers in front of you, as obvious as the air you breathe, but you just ignore it, and frantically continue your hopeless efforts. No matter who is willing to pull you out and show the world to you, guide you. You're just stubborn, and you know it too. It's easier to fight than to surrender. And you fight till you actually succeed in hurting everyone around you. You care about them, but you want to care about yourself more. When you realise that, you push them away, out of your circle of life. Just like that. Just because you felt you were causing unneccesary harm which they could do without. "Be ruthless," you tell yourself. Just so that they stop caring about you and get on with their lives and not hurt themselves anymore.

Then the question lurks, "Aren't you hurting them all more by doing this?" You answer, "No. It's better for them." And yet, it's like the scales are still off balance. Even though you want to say you're not worth it, you can't. Something tugs at you, like you're being unreasonable. Because you *know* you're worth it: worth being cared about. Because you are a person too. Because you know you are innately good. The crazy thing is, you just can't stand hurting people when you're constantly hurting them. And no matter what you do, whether it be cutting yourself off from them, or talk to them, you know that you're still hurting them. What do you do then? You wait for time to handle things? What if it doesn't? What if, all along, time was telling you to be in control, and that it was sick of taking over your life all the time? Because the next thing you know, you've let yourself be ruled by time so much that you're on the last step of your life's staircase: the next being the empty hollow abyss of death.

The selfish part is, you want to care about yourself only. Is it so hard to care about someone else? It's not like the world will come to an end, does it? And that other teeny voice rasps, "They are humans too. Just like you. Just the way you deserve to be cared about, they deserve it too. Is that too difficult?"

"What is WRONG with you??"

"If you MUST be a coward, fine! Go hide in the darkness! Ignore everything and let problems just pile up in a corner till the mountain falls on you! Then you can die happily! If you want to challenge your fears, then open the door to the blinding sunlight. You'll only be blinded for a while: till you get used to it."

I remember once I told myself I want to go out in the world. I realise now, no one is stopping me, apart from me myself. All I have to do is believe. Believe in myself that I can handle situations. That I can sort things out. Becaue no matter what I do, I know that there's still that tiny ray of sunshine that's breathing life into my darkness.

And it will always be there. Because once upon a time, I made a crack in the wall.



~*~



Note to contest holder(s):
I found your contest as a blurting-fest.. So I went on a rant. Feel free to pass your criticism or remove it from the contest if it doesn't qualify to what you were looking for. I made a column out of it so I won't mix it up with my poems.
Thanks.