Humanity

The greatest threat to my humanity is my human nature.

Practicality seeks to ruin kindness;
Jealousy seeks to ruin love;
Desire seeks to ruin commitment.
Depression taints everything I know and love with whatever horrible images my imagination can dream up;
And rage seeks to ruin everything.

Where is the humanity in that?

It is all around me. In every human face I behold.

Everyday we must fight ourselves to overcome our nature,
or at least reach a comfortable middle ground with it.

In my early years I dreamt of the noble knight I would be in my prime.
I laid out all the plans and all the ground work to built a knight.

Now I am war-torn. No nobility is here.
Only exhaustion, pain, fear, practicality, jealousy, desire, depression, rage and complacency.
Only hopelessness.

Yet I fight on, as the shreds of my once gleaming armor of plans, beliefs, morals, fall around me.
Only logic and love saves me from the sword, from the fall.

One day, when my love was gone, when logic told me to accept the sword, I decided I would die.
I planned to die upon my return from battle.
When it would less severely effect the fight of my fellow soldiers.

I begged my love to return, and she did. I pushed the logic away.

Now I try my best to forget my humanity.
To work and fight as a cold machine without this wall of problematic emotions.
I cannot die yet, for her sake.

In the dark precipice I am in, the only thing I trust to help me climb out
is this cord of love that ties me to someone above.

But weary as I am I cough and stall and cling to the rope without moving an inch.
I must not give way to the invading complacency.
The weight of my useless armor,
of the depression laden tears that have soaked my clothes,
of the dirt that I have lived in for years,
all drag me down.
All pull me toward my death.

God, please give me the strength to climb.