Walk Away

"Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools." - William Faulkner

  Sometimes I just want to walk away. From my friends and family. From just about everybody. I just want to throw in the towel. I might keep a select few people in my back pocket. People that rarely seem to need anything from me. But when the moment comes that they do need me, I'd like to walk away from them as well.

  Its not because I don't care about other people and their needs. If anything, I care too much. Or at least more than I want to. But I see them struggle, and I know that I'm relatively helpless. I can say things like, "I'm here for you". I can tell them that I love them. And those things may be true. But what good is that truth, really? The difficult struggles, the ones from which we find it hard to believe that we'll ever emerge, are the ones that we have to fight through by ourselves. They're the internal struggles that really are about life and death. And I don't have the ability to go in there for anybody but myself.

  So I sit on the sidelines and I agonize over every misstep. I try to decide when to offer help and when to back off. I try to decide when to listen passively and when to act. And as I look at these words, I feel like all of this should be simple enough. But its not simple. And its exhausting.

  And sometimes I just don't want to do it anymore. Sometimes I just want to walk away.