Sparkatale

Dreams, I’ve decided,
are Hell.
Don’t misunderstand,
they’re great to have
so long as they’re ‘realistic’,
and I won’t stop longing for mine
until the day I die,
but they put a stubborn dreamer like me
through Hell.
How can I explain…
Think of…
a maze,
not necessarily a literal maze,
but somewhere you could get lost very easily.
Now imagine yourself standing in this maze.
Each fork in the road is a choice
between giving up,
and continuing after your dream.
Now if you’re anything like me,
you continually try to choose
the path to your dream,
without alienating your family.
This is, if your family is anything like mine,
a very difficult road
unless your dream is to be something ‘successful’,
like a lawyer or a doctor.
Now, this path you’re on is going to be rough,
and every now and then,
you’ll find a spider web.
You have three choices here,
the easiest by far being to turn around
and go back to the last fork: 
give up.
The hardest option,
is to climb the web,
get over the top,
and be that much stronger for it,
knowing how hard you’ve worked.
…
The third option,
I wouldn’t normally consider 
because it’s not always a matter of choice.
The third option is to stop,
and sometimes this is enough,
but sometimes you look back years later,
and wonder what would’ve happened had you decided to climb.
And there are times,
more than any of us would like to admit, I’m sure,
that we decide to climb, and just get stuck.
These are the ones that fall victim to one of two spiders.
The first is anxiety,
depression,
anger,
frustration,
or any number of other things that stop you in your tracks
or allow you, just barely, to fight on with that wound.
The second is very different;
this spider only has one name: Death.
One bite,
and you’re dragged down into the unbearable dark
until you can’t take it anymore.
You break.
And in one action you can never take back,
you’re done.
It’s over.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to come back, but it is a fresh new kind of Hell.
…
The point to this isn’t to make you pity, or blame.
It’s meant to make you think about where you are in your maze.
And me?
I’m one of those stubborn dreamers who got stuck,
bitten by every spider but one,
and it’s been so long,
I’m thinking that my spider's dead.