Sunday, January 25, 2009

Downfall

Sometimes my life, despite all of its challenges and frustrations, seems like a fragile gift. If, at any moment, one of its leaning pillars were to be knocked down, the entire foundation would crumble and I would be left in the settling dust of the rubble around me.

Sometimes I get a taste of what it would be like if this happened. A small scent on the wafting breeze, sending a harbinger of dread down my spine. When one element is off, just a fraction, I begin to fathom what it would be like to try and survive without that element. I realize how impossible that would be, thus how dependent I am. I would be ruined without it.

The only way I can see to cure this dependence would be to separate myself, bit by bit, from these elements, until I am strong enough to hold all the pillars by myself. But this act, like scratching paint from a wall, would remove all of the beauty from my life. I would be distancing myself from everything that makes each day worth experiencing. I would be throwing away all the gifts I have been given; the things others long for, daily I see the desire in their eyes.

So how do I win this game? Do I live in my beautiful room, amongst the glorious painted walls, marble floors and pillars, until I am evicted by the fates? Or must I build my own lean-to? Bland, and lonely, where I can exist in the knowledge that I am self sufficient, until I go crazy with the rigid solace with which I have surrounded myself?

I must believe that I will always take the painted room. And when it crumbles, and I with it, I can crumble with the knowledge that I dwelt there, even for a time.

1 comment:

  1. I understand that feeling... The feeling that if even one of a few key things in my life was gone, the rest of my life would fall apart too.

    And then last year I got definate, yet surprising proof, that it's not necessarily the case.

    But even in that moment, I was also given proof that the pain of that situation could not diminish the good that had come before it.

    Overall it was a surprising, and wonderful, revelation.

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