Self-Adversity

The climb has been exhausting.
The peak is nowhere in sight.
The world has been cast in blight.
And the chill bites to the very soul.

But I must push forward.
Onward is the only way I know.
I must reach the top.
The alternative unnerves my being.

But it is not in my hands.
Control of such a goal is illusionary.
And it seems the high I go,
The farther away the top becomes.

Voices once friendly and familiar speak.
Lunacy comes from sage sources.
They breathe of betrayal and knives.
They whisper for me to cease all I know.

Yet my ascent has drawn me no closer.
Save to jagged spears and self-misery.
This self-flagellant journey has taken
from me the last effort I can give.

The fall is harder than the climb.
It draws all effort not to grip the surface.
To return to the old is to defeat this new experience.
I lose myself in the fall.

It is terrifying and liberating.
A strange bliss surrounds me.
The fall becomes irrelevant.
The fall is lost.

Few and brief are the moments of pleasure.
Then I grab and struggle to climb again.
Reason and joy lost to fear.
I climb to regain the lost illusion.

But again the climb becomes fruitless.
And the plummet is much harder.
I fight and struggle the whole way.
And soon the climb gives to the murky abyss.

The fighting is pointless now.
The ideal is forever beyond reach.
The ideal always was.
That is the cruelest joke.