The desert is hot as I stand at its base. It looms overhead, smooth, impenetrable. It stretches as far as I can see in either direction. To the other side, I know -- people have told me, I've seen windows through -- that there is an oasis. I can get there. I can be shaded and cooled and sated, if I can only find a way past what I've built.
Years I've worked at this, not knowing what I did. My efforts true goal was masked from me. I spent hours and days and weeks bolstering its supports. Securing its parapets. Making it taller and stronger and resilient. I know I am to the wrong side of it but I cannot find my way past. I have travelled it's length and it is unending. I was only trying to survive, to comply, to be loved. I was only looking for safety and in turn I made a prison. I have walled myself off from where I wanted to be and now must undo all that I have done. I wonder what is here now of what I've built that will still be here when I am done.
I look at my tools and they are meek. They are woefully inadequate for the task at hand. If I am to destroy this edifice of protection -- something which has protected me for so long by keeping me in this arid waste -- I will have to be tenacious. It will not be a quick or painless exercise.
Brick by brick, I've made what needs to be destroyed. I want it to be gone but I don't know how. I'm scared. I'm hurting. It's a trial I must take on alone. Though, I know it can be done. Others have been here before and have emerged to the other side. I see them and hear them. I see those that have simply found themselves in the oasis, having never visited these wastes. I envy them.
People want to help. They see shadows of the task at hand but they're unable to see the true work that must be done. I must find my own way through. I hope that as I chip and scrape and dent and pull at this mass that fissures emerge. I want so badly for cracks to form.
I've seen some; not enough. Trickles of water seeping through the limestone. Moist rocks and mortar where before there was dry unyielding stone. It is there. I can sense it. I have the capacity to effect change, but it's hard.
As I take up my tools and work on the wall I make progress, and sleep. When I wake it feels like the wall has repaired itself. I look for where I was before, where the water came through, but it cannot be found. The marks from my tools may be seen but the wall has repaired itself. At times I fear it is stronger than before. That it knows what I tried. That it's proof, now, against that attempt. That somehow it is learning.
I made this. Am I working against myself? Is part of me so strongly held to this thing that I don't want it gone? Have I grown to love this desert so much that I can't trust the oasis? I know there is danger there as well as pleasure. No place is perfect. Am I so scared of new hurt that I stay with known agony? Am I so weak? Am I?
I am the architect and the destroyer. I was the one who saw love and anger and ran. I was the one who said no -- I will not feel I will hide -- and I laid the first brick. And with that brick laid I saw my labour and began to build. Now I cannot see what I once ran from.
I am the only one who is able to make progress here. No one else but me. I am surrounded by people who want to help, but I am alone in this effort. It is a battle against myself, and I don't know who I want to win. I need help, but the help cannot reach me. It looks over the wall, down at me in the waste, and says that it sees me. It knows where I am and has guided others through. I look up, and ask how, and it replies with nothing. Look to yourself. Work with your tools. Find the fissures.
The advice sounds hollow. Like it's pandering to me. That it watches and waits for me to do the work that must be done but offers no direction -- A foreman who is asleep. As I look at my tools, I am weary. I've been at this so long, so long that I do not have the strength to continue to do battle with this monolith. It takes my strength and adds it to its own. It grows; taller, deeper, harder. It rebells at my attempts to break it down.
My tools hurt me, but so does inaction. There is nothing but pain here.
I have a choice. I can go forward, working my tools, scraping at what I built. Or I can turn back, and walk into the waste. If I walk away I will die. I do not know when, but the desert is unending and there are no other oases here. I have seen to that.
Leaving is easier. There is no work in that task, but the pain will remain. The further into the wastes I go the more knives will pierce me. Twisting, turning, as they do now. I cannot go that way. I must work. I must find a way through.
I pick up my tools and take to the wall with renewed effort. With pick and hammer I slave at it. I know that it must be broken if I am to survive. But I am daunted. I am ashamed. I was to be stronger than this.
Bit by bit I make progress. I make divots and gouges. I make them in haphazard swipes and flurries. And as I work, it too works. It takes up arms against me. It knows my aim and it knows my goals and it knows that I seek its utter and complete destruction and it loathes me for it. I am its creator and now its destroyer. As I make progress it steals my strength and breaks my tools. It throws me back and displays itself to me renewed. It shows me how it has helped, how it has protected.
"Look. Look at what I have done for you. Look where you are. I brought you here. I brought you success and wealth. I checked those boxes on the list you used to measure you. How DARE you try to dismiss me now."
I hear its words and believe them. I know they are true. It does not lie, it cannot lie. It is me, after all. I have achieved much in my time, but at what cost. Were these accomplishments mine? Were they really what I sought? Who's goals did I achieve? Who's success is this?
And its words do not convey the whole picture. Its words are a rose tinted view of what has happened. I have succeeded but at the cost of satisfaction. My hollow victories and plastic laurels may adorn someone's trophy case, but they do not adorn my own. My heart is empty for my efforts. I have brought glory to someone, but not myself.
But it is not completely empty. There is love there yet. A lone hole in the wall. A hand burst through; grasping. With a firm grip I take hold and don't let go. It is my lifeline. My beacon. My lighthouse. It shows me -- she shows me -- that there is hope here amid the pain and the toil. That there is in fact a reason that I take up this work. Through that hole I feel a misty breeze that tells haunting tales of a better way. That the pain and the agony and the risk is all worth it. That if you can keep going -- keep working -- you can see a way through.
So I work. Brick by brick. Unsure if I am making progress. Unsure if I am taking the right path. Maybe there is no "right path". Perhaps this is the biggest fiction to which I've lashed my life. That somehow, through out the chaos and messiness of existence, there is a right path. A best way. A way that leads to a land without pain. I think that maybe this is the problem I've had the whole time.
If there is no right path, how am I to know which way to go. Have I wasted so much time chasing something that was never there to begin with? To what end. To what end do I do any of this. Why am I doing any of this. I slave at something that pains me, that takes my energy and my joy and forces me to discard it. It's not bottled up -- bottled things can be reopened -- it has been wasted. WASTED for years. I march to a different drummer but it's a tune that I can't seem to dismiss. It sticks in my mind and directs my every movement. I still measure myself against it. And I hate it.
If I have wasted so much time what is my recourse? How can I salvage what remains. This wall looms over me, taunting me. "Look at how solid I am." But there are cracks. They are faint, but they are there. I can sense them. The fact I can see the wall at all now is progress. There was nothing here before but more desert. I was lost in a sea of sand and heat but that's all there was. It was fine then. There is nothing wrong when it's all there is. But now I see.
In a way it's worse. Before, when I didn't know, when it was nothing but desert I could look around and think that it was the only way. This is how all lives are lived. Others are just better at coping. I am weak to be so affected. Look at how well everyone else manages, and here you are wining about the heat. That was the great lie. I was not in a desert with everyone else. I was in a desert alone while those around me looked on from the oasis.
Even as I think back to how things were before, I think back fondly, but as I dig and I sort and I really remember -- maybe for the first time -- I see how awful it was. A shadow of a life being directed but not lead. I think back, thinking it was better, but in reality... in reality... I see now that it is not me thinking back, but the wall. It's again asserting its influence. Dominating me. The wall is playing its tricks trying to make me go back. To go into the desert. I cannot succumb. I cannot go back. Like Robert Frost said: The best way out is through.
I should be angry. I should be filled with rage and at times with my tools I can find that vein. I can see that coursing through the wall as I bore through. But more often than not it's elusive. Even thinking about the anger triggers the walls defences. It shoves me back, pushes me into the desert. I must fight to return, to put pick to wall, to slam the hammer home. I hope that in the end I prove to be as competent at destroying this wall as I was at constructing it. For now though, there is only work.