How many times can I break till I shatter?

It's hard to shut your mind off when it's the only thing you have to comfort you.

The trouble with the mind is it moves quickly, and has thousands of thoughts to consider and provide. A lot of little things can lead back to what you want to avoid, a lot of closed doors can be open by round-about routes.

I'm left with my thoughts, and can do no more than think.


Now is the winter of our discontent.

I'd quote the rest but we rearranged my room and who knows where my Shakespeare collection ended up.

I'm feeling it again, a constant drum against my temples, a throbbing in meter down my spine; I'm growing tired of this place, these halls, these barriers between where I am and where I want to be.

Peace.

Peace alludes me again, peace stands at separated distances and waves primly in the breeze, powder snow wafting fast, drafting my vision and leaving me blinking, yearning, searching, and constantly--ever constantly--falling short.

There is a strength, a will of heart, I have to invoke. A courage and power to keep on keeping on, to trudge another moment in this swamp of sadness, to make it to the end. There is a faith I must exercise that an end will ever come, that an end will be something worth trudging for. That an end will be better than where I was, where I inevitably couldn't stay.

Because people wake up and dreams shatter.

And anything that was once held as reality eventually must become illusion; all that has passed is not fact any longer. The condition of time and life is that it changes. Truth changes, people change, rules change, responses change. I can't look back because back is not real any longer, back is a memory and only exists in the spaces of mind. Back has become a faded reality, a dimming truth. I cannot argue that it was there, it happened, but to revisit and search for all I found before is a futile mistake. The past has passed.

It takes near constant pinches to wake up, an underlying chanting of affirmation that now must be faced. Now has become what it is, I have traveled my roads and there is no altering the station in which I stand and the ground I occupy, whether it's desirable or not.

My trouble, my fault, is that it's not desirable. I find no comfort here. I yearn for pastures or past years, of mountains beyond my own. I'm craving Virginia, the ocean, a Washington forest, anything to smudge away or mar all I'm left to stare at now.

This isn't what I wanted, this isn't what I'd hoped. And in my despair my mind flies back to moments of surety and contentment, happiness and ease.

But those moments are passed, those moments are not real. I drown my heartache in happiness that is false now, happiness that is reserved and saved and soon will dry up. I keep dishing out peace from a limited supply, and the levee's running dry.

And under frantic tears and the whirring of gears in my tumulting mind, I know my answer lies in heaven. I know my peace can be provided. I just have to ask.

I ask and He says wait. I ask and He says patience. There is no guideline, no support, no idea of what I'm waiting for, what I keep waiting for. This blindness is harsher than sorrow. This blindness births discontent.

I feel so good then immediately so terrible. I feel faith and fortitude then weakness and worry. I stumble and my mind wonders and I remind myself my charge to wait; I walk forward and wait. But I constantly must remind myself there is purpose, somewhere beyond the sight line of my mortality, there's reason without my comprehension. It requires ever fiber of my soul to consciously continue, to chant consoling catch-phrases, to provide my own peace.

I know He knows, I know He has grand things coming. It's getting to them and waiting for them in this dark lonely state that I can't seem to handle. It's knowing good is coming but not seeing it that terrifies me. It's being left with the workings of mind to tide me over in the time between now and when that something arrives, it's my mind's enjoyment of memories that destroy me. It's my inability to cease seeing the truth of yesterday and the forlorn fiction of it all today that breaks me down. It's hard to shut your mind off when it's the only thing you have to comfort you.