The Coldest Winter

Dear love,

I write this to speak to you. To tell you who I am and which parts of me have been missing. I have become a monster. Life has robbed me of my sanity. I used to be normal, and normal in the good sense, not the conformative sense. The kind of normal crazy people wish they could be. I find myself on a very dark planet, lost beyond recognition. I know very little of what is happening in my life. Everything seems to be happening all at once and nothing at all. The worst part about being selfish, rather, the punishment that all selfish people must suffer, is that they are blind to their selfish ways. I don’t remember how I became so selfish. It happened so innocently, through harsh and long days. I guess I’ve always been a little selfish; maybe it has to do with the path I grew up on. But in the last couple rememberable winters, I have been a monster; a man consumed by the mysteries and darkness of his consciousness. The road I have been on has had curves, potholes, and bridges that cut short. I guess you can say I’m swimming in dark waters now, a whaling whale lost in the middle of a dark moonless sea. The howls of emptiness are all I hear. Every flying carpet I stood on was pulled from beneath my feet while in air. I think, during all this, that men before me too have sailed these dark waters, and they all return from their journey with treasures. But even the thought of treasure cannot please me now. A treasure is a cycle, not an object. It is a process. And this saddens me; that I know I cannot fool myself. I long to believe in paradise island, to believe in something more than myself. How I wish I could unload the burdens atop my shoulder unto something else. But I know no one can carry it but I. Many a people, seeing your shoulders sunk below your waist, will sympathize and wish to help, to carry some of your burden. But it is only you that can incubate your misfortunes into fortunes. And by the nature of cause and effect, this has made me selfish.

It is February, in what now seems the second year of this long and brutal winter. It is as coldest a winter I’ve ever seen. I am desolate; a damaged machine searching this barren planet for a tool that might fix the sorrows and malfunctions; for a tool which I do not know the shape nor sight of. A computer is a machine that repeats processes. By this definition, a living man, full of soul and bliss, can become a matter of ones and zeros without his consent nor awareness. What was to be gained, I thought, in my conquest to maximize the amount of hours to myself by forcefully abrupting any time given to others, was happiness. Our mathematically lustered minds are keen to believe that more yields more. But I have gained less, and have lost all. To what end I say, has all this gone to? I have stolen all the time to myself as one man could possibly bear, but I have not been the wiser. No, something has been off. This is where I look back to the moral laws I have been taught, and understand their significance. They were right, I say now. To be selfish is to be cruel not to others, but to yourself. Our written code is modeled after our instinctual morals and behavior, not the other way around. I realize this now. It all makes sense. Not that it really matters. Making sense of one thing has never in the end helped make sense of anything.

There was a time when I believed I was on the golden path. To fortune and fame, and great status. I exerted myself to capacities I had not yet discovered I possessed. The harder I push and pedal, the more I’ll coast, went thought. But behind that door was failure, a door that no man wants to see open. It seemed to me, that most of the great things that had happened to me up until that point had happened without my conscious impediments and will; have happened by chance. So I decided to let go, and let life take control. And that is the path I have been on until just recently. This path may work, but its processes are painstakingly slow; unbearably slow. I felt as though I’d given up. I could not bear it any longer. I decided to change that, to regain control. But a mere decision was no match to physical circumstance. No, for I was snowed in, with no way out. From where I stand, I still do not see a path by which I can flee my current state. I shall have to accept my place as it is now, and wait for the day that my path mystically expands into previously nonexistent nodes.

And this is where I am today; waiting. It seems the wrong move. I feel I ought to do more. But what more can I do? What is it in my power to do? I’ll do whatever I can and more at every given chance. I am watering my seed of life, but this winter has produced little sunlight; has caused the snow to pile high atop my inconspicuous grain. Perhaps when the ice melts, I shall be able to see once again the green surface of this light-forsaken land; to see opportunity in each of the cardinal directions. I look forward to that day with great hope, that time may change my circumstance. It is a lie I tell myself to get through the numbingly cold days, but it is my god; a belief in something, anything, that gives me hope.