Likely to Survive

Prologue Because in the silence is where I hear the most powerful voices hard to ignore. It is where I hear the most loudest, wailing noises about my life and my shame. My struggles and my failures. My weaknesses and my imperfections. My misery and my humiliation. This silence consumes me, points at me, judges and condemns me. It hangs me if it does not burn me within. It is the only thing able to point out my true identity that's hidden from the sights of many. It is the only thing that speaks the most direct truth even when I lie so much and so many times, deceiving my own self in the process and exposing my own self to danger and disaster, it is the only thing that speaks the truth that hurts but sets free. This silence forms itself into a very powerful being that possesses the authority to question me the most hardest questions and I find myself crying when it does this with a noise that resembles that of a clanging cymbal against my ears. "Is this really the life you have chosen for yourself?" "What is the reason for all the things you do?" "Is it worthy?" "Does it make you happy?" "Doing what you do, does it make you proud of yourself?" "What happened to your dreams, are you living any of them?" "What you do, does it make you a better person, does it make you a horrible person?" Oh silence, how do I even begin to answer you when you come at me with such great force? I try to run and turn to the bottle, I put the volume up and I clothe myself with crowds in the hope to ignore your voice and so eventually get you to shut up but I always find myself sitting all alone facing you..that moment of silence, you are always there as a judge but a silent one. You have pointed your finger at me telling me just who I am without me having to dispute that fact, you have said some very harsh words to me but you have also told me so many times to get up and shake the dust off. You have told me to get my act together and clean up my mess, to above all stop calling myself a victim. You have even told me how stupid, how foolish, how selfish and how naïve I've been and you have told me to pull up my socks and do better next time. You have never beaten about the bush whenever I have lain my head on the pillow to close my eyes and fall asleep but you have always seized the opportunity to force me to broaden my vision and think ahead about tomorrow..the future, I have always complained and said, "it is futile to do it all", but you have responded and said, "life is not for the meek in spirit, do not be meek in spirit lest you stumble and fall with no hope for you to ever rise and recover again". You have made me hate it all, life, loneliness, the silence.. Your words have always felt like an attack, your words have always been so sharp like a freshly sharpened knife piercing through the soul but at some point I have come to understand that you mean no harm to me, you are a silent judge, a fair one at that. It is all for my own good, my own benefit. I fear you but you force me to be better and do better. You force me to plan ahead and prepare for the future. When I do wrong I may not want to listen to you, I frequently consider you bad because I simply cannot accept and own up, I am in constant denial because I always want to be in the right but at the end you make me see the truth that I already know deep within. I fear you more so for the reason you tell me of all my deeds done in secret, all of my sins you lay them bare right before my very own eyes. From you there is nowhere to hide. Because of you I stand face to face with who I really am, somebody nobody else might ever really know but just I and you. Whatever I do and have done, the secrets I have buried within, you know them and remind me of them every chance you get. The judge that condemns, rebukes, corrects and disciplines, you are! I've tried to justify my reasons by crying victim but you are fair and you are right, as painful and as difficult as it might ever be, we always do have a choice...