status quo

I have built my life around running. I need my body and mind preoccupied, lest I face the emptiness festering within me. Despite my barricade of marriage, career, Christianity, exercise, and literature, my shadow still rips through. I am in a submarine in its dark of waters. My vessel's light penetrates only a few feet ahead of me before it is sucked up by the great darkness. I navigate blindly in its depths. The integrity of its hull, my consciousness, is weakening under the constant pressure, and has begun to spring leaks. But I am a deft repairman; for every leak of weakness and every drip of hate I answer with quick welds of a good evaluation from work, joining a committee at church, or climbing a new 5.10. I run from leak to leak as my ship drifts blindly into the abyss.

I see people every day who have run out of solder. Their unconsciousness overwhelms them, their structure no longer intact.

We are at war with ourselves.