Epiphany?
The Mad Reality of Dreams
So it's been awhile since I've written anything, anything worth writing about anyways...Today, this particular piece of literature has a purpose; to help me remember, lest I forget and lose myself along with everything that really mattered...I may lose myself to my own madness If I don't remember, and I MUST remember. Losing yourself because you've lost your way, because your focus is lost and misguided, it's excruciatingly terrifying to see the path you've been treading and what lies ahead if you continue...You creature of habit...
Let's bring you all up to speed on this life before getting into the premise of my ordeal and the hope that I'll be able to change my ways and my life. I'm a young man, brought up to stick with and take care of my family, a habit of being a homebody. My brother, with his unique character molded around the family and his cerebral palsy, has played an integral part in my life and helped make me the man I am today, and the man I want to be. My mother, keeps the house and presides over external ventures of the family, though many a day she finds herself wracked with pain due to corporeal complications...Makes me the breadwinner, so to speak...Have to provide.
To be young again, the days we were carefree and just had fun...Those days were few for me...
Since the age of approximately five, I began the grueling task of taking care of my brother and I...Don't get me wrong, I did it because it felt Right with me. The day I started, I had the greatest satisfaction I could ever remember. Over the last few years, I'd come to realize that my family had put on some weight, so to speak...They had become a burden to me. My mentality had become skewed since the days of old youth. The days of my actions being simply helpful and supportive, had become a necessity, a requirement by principle...The labyrinth of my heart is illuminated by Virtue...The only good I'm certain of and well acquainted with, by its terms, I can see clearly.
Some of this story will be embellished due to diminished memory of events that happened in my dream state, the most certain is the event that came about and the epiphany that entailed. (Well, was thinking about coming up with a short story of sorts that people might be willing to read...)
The setting: In the backyard of a yellow, tall standing house, standing in the green grass surrounded by a wooden picket fence. Along the side of the house, there's a pathway of swerving stepping stones in between the cement foundation and the fence...The path had become a mire, quicksand like and the stepping stones were disappearing one by one subconsciously...but turned into something like a pool of lava, without me noticing any of the change.
As I head for bed, after an eventful night at work,--- (In this moment in time, I realized I had neglected my brother and anything that really mattered, for all the bull shit life has to offer.) Feeling my heart disappear, losing all sense of anything else, shock struck me like lightening but set in gradually...
Excruciatingly terrified and gashed by my snap realization that my brother might very well be lost to me in the mire of retrograde fire lava with only a snag of a chance left to pull anything out...I ran to pull the vine before it was lost to me, I pulled quickly with every desperate heave hoping for the best case scenario. The more I pulled, the lighter it felt, overwhelmed with anguish and regret that I let myself become distracted by all the trivial matters of the world when I was about to lose everything for my absence and neglect. "For the love of God, let him be ok"...I'd already lost myself and was nowhere to be found, the only thing that needed to be found was him. I reached the end of my rope, and a charred and slightly cut up version of my brother surfaced to me...His frail stature and obscure form was beyond saving realistically. I clenched him close and cried in agony and dismay, feeling some inkling of life ebbing from him, but in my heart, I had fucked up beyond all recognition, there was no saving him from this careless neglect. I was being ripped from the inside...
I couldn't take it anymore, I awakened from the deathly nightmare, mortified by the event. Tears shed occasionally as I pondered my dream, reflecting symbolically on my actions and my life. Everything I own and everything I do is valued little in comparison to my family, but I have taken them for granted having them around constantly. Fear wracked my mind as I wondered if I'd be able to change my life so radically, because creatures of habit don't generally change...If I forget this, then my life will not change, and by the end of my rope, I'll be losing everything without having had lived fully and happily with them...A life decrepit, pitiful, and life burdened by regret.
I think to myself, "I should go check on them"....but I continue to lie there and think about it, thinking that lying there would be harmlessly more appealing...When nothing might be farther from what I felt needed to be done. After a little while, I got out of bed, with my dogs quick on the queue, at four in the morning and went out to the living room where my mom and brother were passed out on each chair of the couch while they were watching TV. Feeling a little chilly in the room, I pulled my blanket over me but noticed my brothers was scattered over him, and I adjusted it so I was sure he'd be warm.
Now, come to write this memoir of sorts into existence, that I will remember and hopefully keep to this conviction and tread passionately onward hoping that I can lead a new life...but we all know, hope isn't enough, it's colorful like a rainbow leading somewhere, but something has to take you there...
"For the love of God, let me change the man I am today, so I can be a better man tomorrow...
How much is my work worth, if it's wasted and made worthless...
In my aims to help people as they have need, I've had little ability to help myself if I have need..."
I write this little story, not only for myself, but for others who tread a path lost and desolate. If we walk alone in our burden, we will eventually find ourselves with nothing because we've neglected anything of real value in our lives. When you look back on your life, what made it all worth living for? People often lose themselves to the distractions of life, but what could be more valued? Life is passing and fleeting, everything else shall remain, but when we are gone...We might appreciate the beauty of life, how invaluable it was those in our lives...We see real beauty...
