The Shadows

Today I find myself at the pinnacle of confusion. If I were to describe my last week in one word it would be ambiguous. Blurred would suffice too, I have had this feeling lingering in me, over me and around me; I am unable to pin it down. I can't really describe it; the closest description would be a deep pit of melancholic quality that confuses and clouds judgment; a fog, perhaps. Irritable. Unsettled. Scared. Everything inside me is telling me to run, but this prison is an impenetrable fortress. I find myself thinking about what life could have been, wanting what life could have been. I lose myself in thoughts of a kinder life, a fairy tale if you will. But fairy tale endings don't exist. Is there an eject button? To be honest, I would settle for a skip button. I have come to far to turn back but the path that lies ahead holds unspeakable horrors. Why must I travel forward? Surely there must be another way. I have entered the wilderness where dreams die and nightmares prevail. It is like I have suddenly awoke to find myself lost. In some way, I guess this was inevitable. At some point, my fears would catch up with me and I would be faced with two choices, destroy or be destroyed. But I am not ready. I am not strong enough to fight this fight. 

Others marvel at my positivity and outlook, but the truth is bleak. The truth is that my light is fading. I feel a small part of me die day by day. I have masked it thus far; now it has surfaced. Yet, I shall not yield to this soul destroying monster. But, I am fighting an invisible enemy. I can not tell you for sure what has awoken this monster; there has been no defining event, no sudden attack. It lives in the shadows. It's nature unknown but its effects powerful. 

The key to fighting an enemy is to know its weakness. It would transpire, that in order to take a shadow captive, the weapon of choice is Light. Shine light on a shadow and not only does the shadow disappear, but culprit is exposed; more often than not, it is exposed as a miniturette, a fraction of the size of its shadow. What is my shadow? I can only offer a suggestion. I think my shadow goes by the name of Responsibility. But not the responsibility that is rightly mine, but the responsibility that I have imposed on myself. Being a patient has been a huge challenge for me. All my interactions and roles have been blurred and my boundaries have been breached. I am in an environment where I am constantly switching between roles of patient, colleague, friend, counsellor, motivator and empathiser. It is this that has been secretly siphoning away my livelihood. I don't know why but I feel responsible for the people that I interact with. I feel like I have a duty of care to them in whatever shape or form that it may take. There is something deep inside of me that passionately compels me to be a friend to the friendless, to laugh when they life and cry when they cry, be it with a patient, friend or colleague. 

The truth is that this is not my responsibility, but it is my heart. The effects on my own well being would be completely different if I wasn't a patient. This is something that I forget, or maybe ignore. I hate being a patient because for me, it has connotations of being a victim and of being useless. There is a deep seated drive inside of me that urges me to always be useful, to always fight, fight even to death. The role of patient is in complete contradiction to who my mentality says I am. But I am wrong. Every soldier needs time off the battlefield to be ministered to, to recover from the wounds sustained. Whether I am currently on the battlefield or in the army hospital is debatable. But one thing is for sure, there are times

when I need to be sure that I have taken myself off the battlefield and allow myself to recover be it physically or emotionally.

The lesson has been learned and the shadow has been taken captive. The Enemy has been defeated; all it took was a little Light.