Endure

Fear grips the soul, as if one is without grace and is awaiting imminent pain and death. It sickens the senses. Hopes and dreams slip through clenched fingers as if a hand is hopelessly grasping on to sand. Direction is all but gone, lost in the only location known. The compass is a liar as it spins endlessly. You drift as a ship without a navigator. Life is like a journey that a captain takes. As he stands at the stands at the helm with no direction or destination in mind he wanders aimlessly around the harbor. It is as if being drunk when sobriety reigns. Stumbling around grasping at anything to ground one giving just enough respite to end the dizziness. A simple walk becomes a laboring experience, with memories of her running around like ghosts reaching for your coat pulling every which way. Tears fill the eyes and stream down a parched face as if ones heart is cleansing itself from all the pain and misery that has befallen this dry spirit. Emotions once blocked by self made walls now crash through like a sledgehammer and invade with no predetermined intent to surrender.

Store front windows offer no release from pain as a reflection appears and reveals the image of two, when only one is present. Passion has left like a virus driven from the bones by a cosmic drug taken against ones will. Nothing soothes the pain, when pain hides around every corner like a heartless killer on the loose. No place is deemed safe. Anxiety forces decisions upon the mind and hear with no release. Joy is everywhere to be seen, but yet the heart feels so cold and lifeless like the ice cracking underneath ones feet. The mind sits blank just wanting the ice to give way to the frigid waters below even if it is cold, deliberate, and numbing. The drowning in this icy prison only paralyzes the body and all emotion, thus in this prison one can eventually break free from his cell and once again find freedom in the outside air. Floating to the surface, bobbing up and down against the massive chunks of ice from the past, a realization sets in that you are blocked from the warmth of the shore by a frozen tundra separated from comfort by a giant wall of ice. Knowing that barring only a miracle you will never be able to feel that warmth, safety, and security ones heart so desperately desires.

Traveling aimlessly across my own siberia, i can only find comfort in the knowledge that i may once again feel warmth and compassion even if from a different instrument than before. There is always that hope. Though hope is so distant from my present location. Still i continue to trudge through this disheveled world willing my frost bitten limbs with each movement to endure. Pushing on i leave a trail of tiny blood drops from the wounds that have not yet healed over and scarred. Pointlessly hoping that it will maybe lead the sojourner like a trail of breadcrumbs to pursue and rescue me. But all i hear is the howling of the wolves beginning to circle to attack, and fillet the frozen flesh from my broken body.

But i endure. Though the only sign i see speaks discouragement as it screams "abandon hope all ye who enter." Endure. Even when your heart is shattered like a mirror. Endure. Even when the soul is warmed only by a marred memory reflected off of your shattered mirror. Endure. Even when memories begin to fade with age though the pain remembers always. Endure. Even when you soul believes that ignorance is bliss. Endure. Even when emotions lay plastered like a canvas on the snow behind. Endure. Even when the demon of loneliness is your only friend, embrace it for through that unyielding friend you find yourself. Endure. For that is all a weary traveler like myself on this journey can do.