Level

It's three am. Again. I have four hours to do at least 3 days worth of work. Piss. I feel like I haven't actually slept in...months? When I don't stay on campus I sleep on the couch, floor, car, wherever I can make it that's warm, relatively comfortable, and where I won't be hassled by CSO's.
I feel like I'm running/tumbling downhill picking up fragments of class, work, writing, friendships as I rapidly accelerate toward the tenebrific bottom, respite coming from being knocked unconscious when balance is lost, smashing head-first into the ground. I wake again with just enough time to think about lamenting the pieces that have drifted by during my blackout that I'll never get back, time enough to mourn the missed/wasted opportunities and begin running again at full-speed toward the abyss. I don't know what's waiting. I know I must go alone. And more than anything, I fear that what's in the darkness will engulf my body/mind/soul, my tri-partite existence, and undo everything I've made, cut me down on my knees, not on my feet. I fear I will unravel before I make it to the bottom and I will stand naked, scarred, unarmed, exhausted, to be ravaged by my own inner demons.
But as I lose layer after layer I become lighter, more agile, less prone to inertia, my body and mind easier to control, to master. I cut my own shackles. My hands are free. But why do I feel weaker now that I don't have that weight to drag? That extra baggage, that self-impediment? Hardship makes you stronger? Whatever doesn't kill you? Fuck that. My right middle knuckle will always be bigger than my left. The burn on my left forearm will never go away. I bear the scars of my own self-destructive, self-defeating nature inside and out, of the choices I've made that I can't take back. That I wouldn't if I could.
I push the pain that would shut me down to the back of my mind where it stews, turning black, corrupting brain-cells, tunneling vision. I have to operate soon. But surgery takes time to recover from and time is not something I have right now. Self-dissection will have to wait. I just hope that when I am forced to gaze into the mirror at what I am, what I've become, what I want to be, I can still fix what's broken. I hope I will have the strength left to eat the darkness, digest it, let it course through my veins, then scream/cry/sweat/vomit it out and be able to stand on my own two feet, on stable ground, and walk out of the shade into the light at my own leisure, synthetic but natural, a hybrid of loss and gain with the courage to follow my own dreams and not ride on the coat-tails of someone else. Cowardice. Fear. Apathy. Unacceptable.