Chains and Weights

The chains are wrapped tightly; links coiling around and around like a venomous snake.
There are many chains, each intertwined with the others to make the roiling mass of cold, hard steel.
The links clink and clack as they layer over one-another to shield the interior from any light.

Their protection is perfect; light never reaches what is inside.

What is inside is the soul; my soul.

The chains constrict it and keep it safe in the darkness but enforce a penalty upon it in exchange for their physical protection. The penalty is that the light of happiness simply cannot penetrate to the depths of cold and impersonal metal that bind it in place. Even the brightest lights only generate the lightest flickers of illumination into the center of the mottled mass of steel.

On the best of days the chains are all there is.

But those days are few in number; those days are wonderful in comparison to the other days.

The days when weights are attached to the chains.

Weights pulling on the chains, forcing them to compress my soul and weigh me down.
Chains that make the slightest effort a challenge of endurance of my will.

Weights that can grow or shrink in mass without warning; weights that fall into the endless oblivion or nothingness. Weights that try to pull my soul out of my body and into that same oblivion.

The pain of such a weight is immense. It is crushing. It is tiring. It is constant.

There is no freedom or release from the weights, at least not within the mortal realm.
There is, however, one potential escape. Death might bring the release that allows the crushing oblivion to be silenced but, on the other hand, it might simply free the soul from the mortal realm to be dragged farther into the bottomless chasm of pain over which it is currently suspended.

The average day is merely tiring: the bad days exhausting.

There, too, are the worst days. The days where the weights are heaviest and the freedom to move about in the world restricted by the complete lack of motivation that arises from such a burden. Those days are nearly unbearable.... and then, sometimes, the misery begins to condense out of the air and dripping into an ever-rising tide from which the weights make escape impossible.

The misery flows from everyone to pool at my feet, and grow deeper and deeper.

Deeper until it threatens to drown me where I stand. Deep enough that the panic of the impending immersion sets in much the way one panics under water without an escape. The panic could lead one to a desperate act, an act that is an attempt to save the soul from the crushing depth of the misery that is flowing higher and higher above it.

A chance for continued existence at the expense of the body that is confined by the chains of misery.

When the misery level climbs the fear of unending pain can influence even the most rational of minds and force them to take a chance on swimming from the bottomless chasm of pain through the river of misery. Perhaps, if they are freed from the chains they will find the peace they need someone on the shoreline.

This far the waters have not reached that high for me, but I can easily imagine the level of panic that the sea of misery will one day bring.

I can imagine that level of panic and fear for what I might do when it is there.

And fear for what lies in the sea and in the chasm..... and what lies on the shores of that vast ocean of suffering.