The Tradeoff

I sit here, pen grasped tightly in my life-beaten hand—parrying and chopping against the folded paper foe in front of me. Slashes wound the creased pulp in front of me, but I fear It may be a better opponent than I initially thought. Every move I make, it feints its attack and parries my best moves. It is not falling to my constant advances; slash, chop, cut, stab, nothing seems to be able to get past it’s guard. It’s defenses are impenetrable. It now strikes back against the hilt of this yellow Ticonderoga thousand-fold sword I strike with, negating any damage I believed it was taking.

I do not wish to fall here today, but I am giving my best fight to save this world in which we have made our lives. I was never a swashbuckler; I have never held a flintlock nor a bus of blunder. I have always been rigid with technique. A surgeon and his scalpel. I have been bested by few, but this will not be where my life ends. This can not be my end. Blood will spill upon this page. Not mine, but “It’s” my greatest adversary. It has also shown me the only true love I have ever known. “It” is something that has never abandoned me, yet It is the only thing that has brought me to my lowest.

My rock bottom is covered with missing posters, and they all resemble me. They all hold the vagrancy and innocence in the eyes of someone whom I no longer recognize. Tattered and beaten. Fresh and renewed. I have been hanging these all my life. I have been searching for myself at the bottom of this chasm. I have searched every bottle and every bag. I have found points against grains of sand, scraping powder off tavern floors. I never came into this abyss with a reason to leave until now.

I have to defeat this evil that lives at the bottom of my soul. This fight will never be for me; this will always be for you. This will be for you and for what comes after you. I have to scratch this story into these walls of slate and mud. You have to know that I fought for you. You have to know that I bear the scars from life, so that you do not have to. You have to understand that I have secluded myself from everything to the point that I feel as though I turned all those everything’s to the nothing, to It, so that you don’t have to. I will not leave you to fight this on your own, but I will be hard. I will be tough. I will not be easy to please. If I defeat It. I make no promises today, just know that I fight with everything I have to make sure you don’t have to fight, not as I have.

To my kin, I will return to you. I know I have been away fighting this battle without you. I know how much you wished to enter battle with me. I am sorry that you couldn’t cross over this line, into this pit, to this despair. This was never meant to be a battle where I needed assistance. This was always mine and mine alone.

I stab, I chop, I slash, I break, and I heal. I walk past the efface committed by the abomination, by It, and I can not believe that It would blot out my entire life. As if our lives were not cosmically intertwined. As if God had not already seen this play out. As if my life was the final solar eclipse, casting It’s shadow upon every bit of light that had ever shown through. I am scribing this not because I need your help, but because I need your understanding. I need you to understand why It had taken control for so long. Why it brought out so much darkness in a soul constructed and cast in light, which once used to radiate warmth for anyone and everyone around me, such as the Sun for the Earth.

I am alone in this fight even when I don’t want to be, even when the rules don’t apply. I have been left to fend for myself, and I don’t have anyone to fall on when I need help. No one except this sword. Falling on this sword will be the only control I maintain from It. It can not take that away from me. It can take everything else, except my exit.

With Love,

— A.B.

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