I am exhausted today.  I am exhausted from thinking, from worrying, from controlling all my impulses and watching each of my steps to make sure what I do is right.  Exhausted from making sure what I do is for the best.  There comes a time when we all need to simply close our eyes and breathe, to find peace from the voices, from the demons, and from the doubts.

I have a brain that doesn’t allow for much rest.  Even when everything is going well, my mind can burn from the sheer exhaustion of predicting what will come next; because there is always something next.  The truth of life is there is no rest, not for the weary and not for the weak.  The voices in my head do not allow for peace, and the fear in my heart does not allow for rest.  It is part of makeup and part of who I am.  Relaxation is only achieved through exhaustion, and even then the relaxation can’t give me enough succor to look forward to the next day.

This last week has been tough.  Probably one of the toughest I have felt in years.  On the one hand it makes it easier to put in perspective all those things I thought were difficult, but truly can’t touch the heaviness in my heart today.  But on the other hand, I do so much better with make-believe problems, than when it gets real.  I can pretend, I can prevaricate, and I can dream with the greatest ever lived.  But life, real life is so much harder.  It takes courage and strength and it takes the honesty that moves us, changes us and causes us to be reborn in the fire of doubt, pain and insanity.

I have never actually had perfection in my life; I simply don’t think this disease, the mental disorder allows for such luxuries.  I see others whose life while hard, in no way buckle under the strain I so much want to lie down and feel.  And while there are gifts with the burn, the ability to write, the ability to feel deeply, there is also the exhaustion of trying to not only reveal in the pain but to find a way through it.  There is a dichotomy that I feel: the beauty of that pain versus the horror of that pain.  The two sides of a coin, the two faces of fate, and the secret of my life.

I want more than anything right now to simply fall asleep, and feel the darkness falling.  I want to be alone, in the absolute silence of midnight, and to find the path that I need through the suppression of all that I feel in the sunlight.  I want to be brave and yet find the magic that only tragedy can give.  The balloons right before the burst, the weaving of snakes through the warmth, and the monsters that are but shadows on the walls. The faceless and nameless screaming shadows that will haunt me until again, the world brightens.

There is comfort in the insanity, the sadness, even the exhaustion.  It is the comfort of the familiar, the place that I know and can fight to understand.  It is the side of the moon that I live on, and the window that remains closed.  It is the place of darkness where I don’t need light, because I am familiar with its very walls and its very depth.  I know the feel of those walls that I run my hand down to guide my way out; and I know the feel of the sunshine after a long dose of misery.  There is comfort in pain.

But it is my pain. The pain that I travel, the pain that I feel.  It is not the pain of those I love, and it will always be the pain I feel for them.  I don’t want the darkness to be felt by anyone but myself, not in a selfish desire to have what no one else can, but so that the sun can always find them.  I accept the pain, the darkness, the insanity, so that those I love can live freely, can dance in the rain and feel the coolness of the wind-swept air.  I need to know that the things that I fear, the shadows that I live with are only haunting me; or the demons will win the fight I have been in since the moment I was conceived.  I need to know that I take the darkness so those around me never do.

I can’t function well when those around me feel the darkness, no matter how much they desperately need it.   I hate the shadows that block the paths of those I love most in this world.  There is a part of me that screams the unfairness of it all.  I am supposed to see the shadows so those I love never have to.  And it exhausts me to watch others fight battles that I wish I could take.  It makes my world difficult to navigate when I am constantly looking over my shoulder for the answers to other’s wounds.  It makes me tired to not be able to fight but instead sit so silently by when others are suffering.  I need to fight, it is what I know; peace is simply not a part of my world.

And I am tired today.  I am so tired that even as I write these words, even as my fingers move so quickly over the keys, my head is as heavy as my heart.  As I try to find that way in my own world, I am fighting the exhaustion of being something for everyone else.  I pray to God that one day soon he will leave the demons to me and allow me to rest in that peace.