When You Realize Everything Is Slowly Getting Better

It’s like you’re Sisyphus, carrying the burden of a boulder up a mountain every day, just to have it fall once you reach the peak. I’m sorry for that. I know how heavy the burden is. I know it’s suffocating you, crushing you, belittling you to the point that you just don’t know what to do anymore. You feel like every day you have tasks that you come so close to seeing to fruition, but then you watch them fall. It’s becoming exhausting.

You’ve heard it all before, and it’s not that you’re sick of them caring about you, it’s just that you’re sick of hearing words that don’t change anything over and over again. It’s not that you’re not listening, it’s just the fact that everything is intelligible when you’re underwater. You feel like you’re drowning, and it’s the final moments before that last gasp for air, and you want the last shot you take to hit the bullseye.

You don’t want to be the boy that cried wolf. You’re okay struggling alone if that means you don’t have to fear being alone when the big, bad wolf comes around with his shackles raised. If you’re going to cry out, you want it to be because it’s the only option.

It’s the confusing turmoil of feeling emptiness and then everything all at once. It takes so much out of you. You’re exhausted. The bags underneath your eyes have sunken into your bones. Your exhaustion has become a part of you, but it’s not the tiredness one feels when they’ve missed out on sleep. You’re tired for so many other reasons.

You want to give up, but you know you can’t. There’s too much to keep on with. Too many people who love you that want you to succeed. Their expectations weigh down on you, chains on your chest, only sinking you deeper. You can’t give up because that would take too much.

Things start to get better. You can’t believe it. Truthfully, you don’t want to believe it. You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. It doesn’t drop when you expect it, but you’re wearing your chain-link armor, ready for war to be declared at any moment.

Everything is slowly getting better. It’s like the dim light at the end of the tunnel is slowly being turned up on the light switch. You’re surer of yourself now. You’re still not at your best, but you know what rock bottom looks like. The light is brighter. Honestly, it strains your eyes a bit.

Things have settled in a bit. The mountain looks more like a small hill now. Your loved ones’ voices sound clearer now when they give you advice. The wolf has left the village, and you do not expect his return. All of the turmoil that felt that a tsunami brewing inside you has become calm, rolling waves on a beach. You still consider giving up, but you don’t think of it as often anymore. Your armor is slowly coming off. You don’t feel the need to put it on every day. Everything is slowly getting better.

You remember now why you went through it all. The light at the end of the tunnel, though it burns your eyes, is the sweetest joy to be felt.