tied to my neck.

What else can you do besides just keep going? Life continually hits you with its bullets and throws chains around you to slow you down. But even if you move at a snails pace, you can never stop. The minute you stop is the minute you die.

I wear the battle scars of this life like rusty armor and I remember the story behind each and every one. I carry the weight of a turbulent youth. Blurred memories that have become that way for a reason. Went through motions in an attempt to become a productive member of society and wound up anything but. Now I hold a useless, dusty piece of paper from a university and I am most likely a disappointment to my family on so many various levels. But I keep going.

I'm trying to carve my own path through these dense, unforgiving woods with a butter knife when I should have a machete. But I never stop. Life keeps dropping these weights on my soul. And I feel every single, tiresome ounce of them. They hang so heavy on my back. They cloud my mind with doubt, fear, hate, stress and anguish. But I never stop. I hold it all and will carry it all with me until the day they throw my lifeless body in a ditch.

This life takes you down some bad paths, so I burn the bridges that were never meant to hold me and I find another way. And I truly miss every single one of them. But they represent moments of weakness in my life. They represent once familiar faces who took advantage of my kindness and my good nature. Who took advantage of my heart and my friendship. It sometimes pains me to pass these people on the street or the dim lights of a bar. People who I would have done anything for at points in my life. But they were so unappreciative of that fact that I can no longer speak to them or even look at them out of nothing more than sheer disappointment in their souls. Or lack thereof. One can only take so much, one can only try so hard, so these bridges are burnt to the ground and I continue on.

Fall into mud. Keep going. Knife in your back. Keep going. Stake through your heart. Keep going. There is no option. There is no choice. This life would love nothing more than to see you wither and fade. To see you fail miserably. To see these weights drag you to your knees. To see your spirit broken into pieces. And as much as the hard times in my life make me want to fall down and die, I will never stop. I will never give up. I will forever hold in my mind the faces and places in my life that have brought me pain. I always will miss what they used to be in my life, but I will never look back because that is a losing game. I'm spread out so thin and I don’t know how much more I have in me to give.