Give It Up?

Once again, the life I knew has turned 180 degrees.  Everything I thought I knew means nothing.  Every drop of effort milked from my pores… Every tear I cried… Every prayer to the unknown… Every second chance given blindly… Every ounce of unconditional love given…

Was all for naught. It’s all boiled down to this day in this life of loneliness.

The emptiness has ground meaningless activities to pure torture.  Everywhere I go, everything I see is a shitty reminder of wasted… everything.

So I seek a way, a path around the pain… an alternative to feeling every impurity in the road. It comes in the form of attention. 

I’m navigating my way around this, in every effort not to succumb to the addict I was. It would seem I am swirling in water I do not recognize with a strong under-current.  Every attempt I make to be more than the sum of my mistakes, takes me closer to a jagged rock peeking out of the water.

Everyone wants a piece.  Just a taste.  Just a token.  Like a prize at the fair.  Everyone wants to win.  Just once.  No matter how trivial and useless the prize is.  No matter the fact that it will be trash in a week… they fight to call it theirs … they fight to say they won … they fight to embrace and smother it.

I feel like I’m that prize – or at least that one little part of me is.  Desperately seeking to avoid the rocks, each moment of strength is followed by a moment of powerful defeat.  This is followed by my weakness. 

Do I just give up and be what they want me to be?  What I’ve always been?  The one thing I can do that makes them happy – for just one moment?  At this point, I want to give it up. Maybe if I do it can all end.  All the pretending. All the stories.  All the lies. …they can all end and I can be me again. I wish it worked like that. I wish I could give enough that they would be done with me.  Done taking.  Done smothering. Done lying. Done pretending …I matter.

But they won’t ever be done, will they?  This is just one in a line of contestants waiting to play the game, isn’t it? How does one even know anymore?  How could I claim to know anything at this point?  Everything I knew is gone.