The End of the Labyrinth of Pain – The Middle

Once there were countless reasons why.

Now, only a few remain. Some strike terror into others; to me, they are stubborn warriors—fighting an invisible, brutal war from the inside out.

With each passing day, month, and year,I grow more resigned to the death of perfection, and the bitter wound of disillusionment. A disillusionment so deeply utopian that only I could have invented it, clung to it, battling doubt while inevitably falling to life’s quiet brutality.

Life does not strive to be fair. It simply is—relentless in its indifference.

The end of the labyrinth of pain is no salvation. It is a cold, funerary procession of truths that will not bend. It is the merciless verdict that no matter what you do, it will never be enough.

Fight harder than ever—only to lose as you always have. There is no undoing. There is no rewriting.

Around me, I see hollow lives, drifting in ignorance, melting into dust. Towering castles of fragile sand, collapsing—while blind witnesses look on without seeing, and I, from this cursed vantage, cannot pretend not to see.

For every second lost trying to reclaim lost time, for every breath wasted seeking understanding, I was only ever meant to find this: there are things you cannot change. Only accept.

And here, acceptance is not defeat. It is not submission. It is colder than that. It is the stripping of will, the relinquishing of illusions, the grim understanding that life plants and reaps without your consent.

You are only a field to be harvested.

When the words here fall silent at last, it will be because every war has ended. Because even the strongest warrior cannot hold the heavens on their back forever. Sooner or later, the knees shatter. The spine breaks.

I carry infinite fears—hardened through decades of chaos, nurtured between sharp certainties and cruel mirages. Fears swollen and bloated by everything I have lived, immovable by time, blocking the path forward, clouding my sight—perhaps shielding me from horrors I dare not see.

The middle of the end is only a reflux—a brutal reexamination of the screams that have died, and those still clawing from the shadows. And strangely, the echoes are clearer now than they ever were.

Perhaps there are more like me out there, lost between doors left ajar and paths chalked in desperation.

You are not alone.

I find myself hoping—that when my final days come, all lucidity will be taken from me, and gentler souls will preserve what little remains as I carve the last stretch of this road. I hope I will forget the betrayals, the friends lost, the smiles denied. If I even remember how to hope at all.

But that is not today.

Those are only phantoms—whispers of a future still waiting its hour.

Meanwhile, I know that fewer and fewer will understand these words. And I must learn to filter those who cannot feel them. Who have never felt the way I always have.

I close my eyes. I open them again. Nausea grips me, my silent, invisible companion of endless, broken nights. I fade quietly—here without being here, forgotten in plain sight.

Longing for the days of stages and lights—days only beautiful in their illusion.

I made a quick visit—an unexpected one.

I had to plant one more seed along this dying road…and here stands the middle.