A Willing Participant

The days flow as you wish them to, despite your protestations that your life is not your own.

So consumed are you by responsibilities (lost in a manner that you never planned) that you look up and half of your life has floated downstream.

But, still, somewhere deep, somewhere real, somewhere far below your busy schedule and hourly surface, you know there is no one to blame. No victim. Nothing has been purloined. You have not been stolen. You gave yourself away, and that realization burns.

You were a willing participant in the robbery of you.

Or maybe it was just a trade. That's what you tell yourself in the good moments. But those moments are rare now; the growing discontent ruins them. The vague anger. The unquiet melancholy. It's easier to don headphones of any sort and try once again to drown everything: every passion, every emotion, every hot word that rises in your throat but never makes it past your lips because what would happen if you spoke it? Things might never be the same. And how would you live then?

Still you stand in the wake of your own life, wondering, wandering, waiting.

Each day you make the choices to stay in your hell, or your purgatory ... or your heaven.

Each day.

That's hard to swallow, isn't it?

I know.

I choked on it once too.

Then I dove over the side of the boat and headlong into the icy black water. And once I got over the shock of not dying, I started swimming like hell.