Evolution Of Everything

DEAD ENDS

I keep looking everywhere for answers. 

Scrolling through forum after forum until I can't read through my tears. 

Why am I like this?

Why do I feel the way I do? Or, more specifically, why don't I? 

I don't feel the way I should. Really, I don't feel at all. What is wrong with me? When did I push everything down so far that it stopped being able to come back up? Everyone around me is so strong, they're the perfect role models. They deal with their pain with beauty, strength and grace. I don't deal with mine at all. 

I take them, and I set them behind me until I can find a 'good' time to deal with them. But that time hasn't come, and I've stacked my problems so high they block out the sun. So high that I am cut off from it all, left with nothing but the shadow of my stack of issues, looming over my head constantly, always threatening to collapse on me. 

Suffocating.

I look to the top of the pile, squinting to catch the glimmer of warmth that flickers behind the darkness of all that shadow. What happens when I finally do find a 'good' time, and I pull that top box down to look into it? To put it where it goes, wherever that is. Will the change in weight, the disruption of my carefully maintained mound, send the rest of those packages tumbling down on top of me? How do I force myself to look into the box in the first place? When I know I won't like its contents. If I look into the black hole inside it, I know it will suck everything from me, until there's nothing left. I will be a husk of my former self, floating around like a fragile, misty wraith in a sea of solid humans. All it would take is one wrong bump to shatter my thin, cracked glass and send what's left of me flying into the box's murky depths. I don't want to be consumed by it, that would be a fate worse than death. 

No, I shake my head, it's best to leave the box in it's carefully selected, designated spot, and to continue stacking more on top. I think that would be good, and I settle each new box on top with finality. That will keep the bad box in place, and the new one on top will keep the next bad one in place, and the one after that, and the one after that. I'll stack and stack until there's no room left. Until I can't reach quite high enough. I'll keep stacking until I need ladders and cranes, or I'll die first. Whichever is easier, or quickest I suppose. 

I wonder though, sometimes, when I add a new box to the pile. How long will I live with the cool hands of that shadow on my back, crushing me with the weight of its pain and the implication of its responsibilities? Will I ever see the sun again? Or must I be content with the flickers of heat that I can catch between the crack from now on? Flickers that grow ever rarer. 

If taking down those boxes means risking losing myself to the unerring pain, is a life in shadow worth it? Is this life even worth protecting from those boxes, the void? Will I even see the sun if I tackle the pile, or will I suffocate under the weight of all those falling boxes? 

Live in the shadows until I die? or risk my life wading through the darkness in the hopes of regaining how I once lived? Both seem futile to me. There are no right choices. I carry on.