It's amazing just how much some things can scare you much more than others.  Imagine a clock ticking.  There's only two weeks left, and the clock is ticking for me.  I can feel each minute go past until I claw at my ears and my eyes, trying to make it stop.  But of course it never does.  Because in roughly two weeks, slightly over two weeks to be precise, my world (as I currently know it) will come crashing down for no good reason.  If there is ever a reason.

But the ticking thumps inside my temple, and it scares me terribly, because I will no longer be the same person in two weeks.  I may return a better person, or I may return a deteriorated version of my current self.  It doesn't matter.  All that matters is the ticking of the clock, and the fear that I feel.  I wonder what it feels like to have the power to crush a person.  I wonder if that power is ever fully realized.  I am quite sure that that power is often utilized... but do people realize just how much they can effect the lives of others?

At least this shows I care, though, right?  Is there anything else important?  After all, people need to feel.  How else can you know that you're alive?  There are a few ways to see if you are truly alive, and they all involve feeling pain.  To cut yourself, and to see if you bleed... that's painful, but rewarding when you cry, not because your arm hurts, or because you have sunk so low that you don't feel anything at all for anything or anyone, but you cry because you can feel the life in your veins pulse beneath you, and that's enough for now.  Or, you can get emotionally involved with someone, and you can care for them.  If you care for them, and you don't feel cared for in return, your world takes on a suspiciously colourful glare, because you can tell that you are on a higher plane of emotion than all those around you.  There's effort in getting up, there's effort in seeing them and talking to them, and there's effort in smiling at them when all you want to do it close your eyes and fade away.  All the while, you ache because life must go on as normal.  And when you ache, you can feel the life inside you warp and tear under the strain, like a railroad track in summer, or like an aluminium spoon left in the sun.  You may warp into something hideously disfigured, but at least you're moving.  You're not stuck in the drawer with the other spoons.  You're unique.
 

[ ... You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.  You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.  Our culture has made us all the same.  No one is truly white or black or rich, anymore.  We all want the same.  Individually, we are nothing... ]


But then, you awake, and everything is different, and you're changing, and you can feel the ticking of the clock.  You've nothing left you need, and you just wait for the change to sweep over you, because it is coming, oh you can feel it, can't you?  And it scares you to death that someone has the power to crush you, and that power will in all likelihood by wielded viciously and ruthlessly and in all likelihood naively and ignorantly, until you wither [again] and you fade [again].  And you pick yourself up for the next round.  It shall come again.