My Companions.
I have always had this incessant need to keep moving forward. I never stop because I feel like life is nipping at my heels and if I waiver along my journey, if I slip up even for one second, I will lose the race. This race is not a walk through the park, its not as quick as a hundred yard dash, it is marathon. A feat that is long, strenuous and if you are not properly guided you can easily lose your way. Sure the seasoned runner, the trained athlete, the shoe-in winner, looks like they have it all together. They are leading the pack; they have run so far ahead there is not even a trace of the second place runner. They cannot see, hear, or feel the presence of any competitor. Onlookers may think this athlete to be at the top of their game, a champion.
Striving to be the best is not an easy road, and those who look to the winner with envious eyes do not see the pain hidden beneath the victorious smile. In the methodical training to reach the top, a champion makes no exceptions, everyone is competition, leave no time for distraction. In this way you unintentionally cut yourself off, from feeling. It is not that you do not feel, it is just that emotion is a sign of weakness and the race is more important than that. So it builds. Every once in while your emotion will rear its ugly head, but only when you are alone. Considering how you have distanced everyone in your race to the top, those times have been becoming more and more frequent.
It is an important day, a qualifying day. So you do as you have been taught, prepare, you are always preparing. Put on your headphones, isolate yourself. Stretch; do not feel your aches and pains. And no matter what, do not feel, emotion is for the weak, and you are a champion. You see, the funny thing about emotion is, that it eats at you. Emotion does not want to be bottled within the confines of your body; it wants the world to acknowledge its existence. Emotion is Jenga; it pulls blocks one by one, each time leaving you slightly wobblier than the last. Until, you are almost at the finish line, feeling as though you have won. It strikes you, right there where you stand, the air is sucked from your body and you cannot breathe, the keystone block has been pulled. Your tower starts to fall, block by block, almost in slow motion, you fall to the ground. You have no choice, emotion has won, tears. You soon realize you are fighting a losing game, a game that emotion will always win.
And even if you do win; where is the comfort in victory? I have lead myself to believe that by being the best, by being victorious in every aspect of my life, I will win the respect of others. What then? At the end the day, you and victory can go home together. When you get there, victory abandons you at the door, and his close friend accompanies you to the living room. His name, loneliness.
