Crud Meridian

After years bouncing off the walls of your own disfunction you will get bored of a bruised forehead and settle for smaller ambitions. 

You will be educated, but not in a way that is useful or interesting, and the people you meet will be surprised to discover your supposed field of study. 

You will never get as far as Doing Better but you are smart enough to know that Something Is Wrong and you hold onto that very hard, fearful that in forgetting you will perpetuate and disseminate whatever brought you here. 

Your battle for the rest of your life will be about resentment and regret, and every day you continue to wake up will be a small golden victory. 
Your final win will be to accept what was always out of your control. You will pray only for greater capacity for love. This is done not out of kindness or empathy but survivalist necessity. You know that your bones are hollowed out with bitter anger, and it pushes against every part of you. Without bigger love you will either collapse or explode, and in either direction someone precious will be destroyed beyond repair. 

You can track the malignancy of it in your stories, as each passing year becomes a greater challenge in balancing hope and honesty. 

You know it didn’t have to be this way, that you had a choice, that you didn’t know how to make the choice, that if someone asked you whether you chose to be like this you would have said No Of Course Not and yet conversely you will always feel as though you could have chosen some other way to be, that it was an option. There was an option. You missed it. You missed it, you’ll say. 

You are no longer waiting for the fever to break.

It’s okay.