Drowning

Sometimes, I feel like enlightenment is a curse.

It's crossed my mind whether there's really a quantifiable difference between believing a lie, and simply not knowing the truth.

Maybe I was wrong; perhaps ignorance is bliss.

I'm sitting here in a library; a place of knowledge, filled with so much factual text, information and intelligence, and people studying these volumes and presumably bringing themselves to some of elevated awareness, higher and intelligent.

And it's dawned on me that I've never felt so out of place.

I live my life in a sort of limbo.

Some people find that purpose they have in life, no matter how mundane, and they do it.

They work, they play, they have fun; they don't tend to venture beyond the boundaries or their normal existence, but that's okay with them.

They're content with their lot in life. They're all set.

Then there are people who, similarly, feel they have some goal in life, yet conversely have to spend years of their life immersing themselves in some chosen aspect, vastly broadening their horizons so they can achieve their ultimate passion.

I know for a fact that I'm neither.

I stepped into the outer world, into the waters of intellect and skill.

I just don't know how to swim.

I don't have a purpose. I don't have a passion. I don't have a goal.

I'm struggling to stay afloat, and the shore's nowhere in sight.

What if this was all a big mistake?

There's so much in my life that I don't understand, but I feel like I would have been happier if I'd never known it was there.

Like not being able to not see the trick to an optical illusion, things will never look the same to me. I don't know how it will ever be like it was before, yet I still struggle to make sense of what it is now.

Worst of all is I feel as though I'm wasting my time. I'm stuck in this strange place where I obviously don't belong.

And there's no way out.

"I've watched you fly on paper wings, halfway around the world

until they burned up in the atmosphere, sent you spiralling down

landing somewhere far from here with no one else around" - Rise Against