Where am I - in here?

I feel as though I've lost.

I've failed.

There was a lesson in my past which I missed, forgot, never followed or listened to. That is my fatal flaw, isn't it? The one thing I never learned to do, and it will kill me, or ruin me.

I can feel myself failing, even more. I am helpless to stop it.

Everyone continues telling me what I should do, advising me, persuading me this path, or that, is the better for me. The more I hear, the more I simply want to crawl into a ball, shrink within myself, and hide away from it all. I never wanted to do more than I could, and now I feel as though that is all they are asking of me, willing me to do. I can't handle it.

I still feel lost, lost to it all. I should have been gone years ago, and yet for some reason, I never left.

I can't tell if this is momentary, I can't see through this, and I don't know what to do with it, or myself. I'm huddled in the midst of a hurricane, the rain sheeting down is clouding my vision and freezing my limbs, buffeting my body until I become one with the wind. I can't tell if it's the wind and the rain in my eyes, or my own tears. The cold, the cold traps me, blinds me, chains me to this ground, this place. I cannot move forward, but I'm afraid that if I don't, I never will. I don't know how.

I am a wraith, I barely breathe, I hardly sleep, the only thing I know now are my words. The only future I see are my words. But that is a small future, it does not reach far. It does not reach far enough, and yet it feels as though it reaches to forever.

But they keep telling me, keep pushing me, where I cannot see. That cave of darkness, they want me there. For some reason they expect me to know what's in there, to be able to find the darkness and shape myself to it, they expect me to master the stone, the uneven ground, the hollow walls and dripping, dripping waters.

I will stumble, fall and never get up. That's what they do not understand. I'm not as strong as they thought I was, not as able. The fledgling bird pushed out of the tree in the dead of winter. Abandon me, they've abandoned me, and I know no way to live.

I want to scream at them, simply let me be, if you want me to know - teach me, show me how I'm supposed to do this all alone. I was never taught this kind of self-sufficiency. I will drown if I don't learn to swim, yet they've stripped me of my limbs. No walking away, no climbing out of this hole, no leaving this darkness.