The Law Of Attrition

 

It's funny this law of attrition. At first you can hold it back, or at least, you think you can. Somewhere along the way you get weary of trying. Or you just give up. It takes too much energy, it's just too much pain. And there is no reason to hold back the tide. 

Canute couldn't.

You can't.

It's as simple as that.

And it feels like I've been running on empty for a long, long time, just clothes over a corpse pretending to be alive.

I pretend to care but I don't.

I save a kitten because she is given to me a week old and helpless, but it is the dead helping the dead.

I feed her, she sucks at the bottle, and stops. And doesn't put on weight, doesn't grow. 

I hire Rose to come take care of her when I can't be there, but she doesn't put on weight and doesn't grow.

I spend most of my salary on her babysitting but she doesn't put on weight and doesn't grow. Her eyes look sad and pained.

I take her to the vet, finally, who says there's something wrong because she is way too small for her age.

I give her tonics and vitamins and immune boosters (all prescribed) and she grows. A little.

But I'm tired.

I'm tired of all the meaninglessness that I have to wade through, coming back to the start over and over again.

I'm tired of the evil shadows that adhere to me like barnacles, that I can't shake off, that smile at me and pretend to love me, while I feel their teeth lodge in my neck as they drain the life force out of me. I'm so tired.

I'm exhausted.

I don't know who you are, I don't know at which point you appeared, I don't know when the switch was made and when you came in and replaced a living person with your shadow. 

The Buddha says you know that the sea is the sea because it always tastes of salt. And you know enlightenment is enlightenment because it always tastes of freedom.

But you taste of shackles and shadows and the deep bitter tang of unhappiness, of subjection. You taste of confusion, of lies.

What could you be, oh, what else could you be?

And I'm so tired of fighting you.

I'm so tired.

I just want to lie down here, and give up.

And let all that is to die, die, beginning with tired love.