Falling is better than despair

Here is my metaphor: When the walls close in and I keep going down the dark and narrowing tunnel of life until it no longer branches, and I can never now find my way back now, and the way I am on has come to some strange, unalterable end, I stand there, lost and abandoned. I am desolate. I have exhausted myself and worn my virtues to bone. And though all my sins, real and imagined, shed a kind of light, they only reveal that there is no place to go.

So to hell with all my sins. Right there, hopeless, at the end of the tunnel, I abandon all my failings; real ones, made up ones, instilled ones, and even the ones that are secretly virtues.

I make plans. And in my plans I become perfect. I will never fail, or waste a moment, or make a mistake ever again. I will be perfect and committed and energized and pure. It is a simple and glorious solution and everything is wonderful.

And that is how I fall. I do not intend it. It is not part of the plan. Reaching for perfection I fall in that very second.

Let me tell you, despair is better than falling. Terror comes first, and when I hit the ground I am battered and broken and there is no part of me that does not hurt. Lying there hurts most of all so I get up, shaken, trembling. I wipe the blood from my eyes, and I look around. I find that I can now go anywhere, there are no tunnels here, no walls. I can go anywhere, anywhere at all as long as it's up.

So on the gentlest, softest, easiest path I can find, I head that way.