At The End...
Sometimes the days march mercilessly onwards and the effort it takes to wake up in the morning hardly seem worth it a few hours into the day. The effect each episode has on both mind and spirit reminds me of bare knuckle fighting. The first few punches come as a shock, the pain shooting through your fist, feeling your flesh make contact with the target. You feel like you can't ever touch your knuckles to anything again or the pain that results would be too unbearable. But then something inside you motivates you and you are able to block the negativity out of your mind and you throw another punch. You are amazed to realize it still hurts, but it's not quite the same pain as before. You were expecting it this time and you prepared, even if it was just enough to keep you from giving up. You feel a sense of accomplishment, you feel empowered, you've overcome your negative thoughts, pushed them back in your brain and proceeded to do what you wanted to do. You continue to pound away, realizing that your hands are slowly growing numb and the pain is rapidly disappearing. You begin to hit it harder, your hands become one with your arm and your shoulders begin to ache from their toiling. Soon enough, you are not even thinking about anything and your punches become mechanical, but something inside continues to drive you until the last bit of energy is used. You collapse from your efforts and it is not until a few moments after you stop to think do you realize what you have done. The pain in your knuckles returns, even worse than when you had first started. Your hands throb and you look down to assess the damage. Your knuckles are battered and bruised, swollen beyond recognition so that you cannot discern your knuckles from the space in between. Every part of your body begins to ache again and you wonder how you could have pushed yourself to do something that you probably couldn't have done. You wonder why there were no signs warning you against the damage that would result. You wonder why there was nothing there to stop you from hurting yourself. Then you realize that there had been warning signs, that they had always been there, but you chose to ignore them, chose to try to work through them. You realize that the problems don't come suddenly, that they develop over time, and that while you were trying so hard just to push yourself through it all, you were unaware of the problems that would result from all that you had done.