We've seen these defensive masks being constantly put up by the unlikeliest of people these days. Purely as a defense mechanism.
I apparently am not exception to this rule. Realizing that I play along alone doesn't suffice to break the shackles of it. It seems to demand competition only from harder and strong resolve, something that I cannot seem to muster with the current amount of resources unwittingly chewing thought-waves and occupying small pockets in my brain.
So I give myself the same worn excuse that I'm different from the rest, I can break the pattern whenever I so desire, oblivious to the fact that I may just be in too deep to make a hasty exit. Like quicksand the gaps of air rapidly close all around me trapping me further in an unyielding mass of static noise that drown out cognitive thought, enslaving me to my most hard coded societal rule set. I put up a mask. Hoping to either gradually loosen my feet so I can once again run in field of free thought, or I wait for the ground to harden, which itself is an obvious trap to the vigilant observer, me not being one of them.
So I wait.
I wait in agony, my heart bruised, my brain heavy and my breathing stifled, my brain makes do with every little breath my mouth receives by gasping and lunging towards it by propelling itself into the void seeking it, seeking air like it needed it to survive!
I look around me, others lie strewn in fields of despair, covered in their own waste, the excrement of their own actions and oblivious to the pain because they're lost in the mirage of the "One" that was supposed to have redeemed them! Redeem them by extending a hand and pulling them out of their misery, Alas, death comes only to the deserved!
I try to help, those sinking in above their necks as a meager measure of saving them and preserving my own humanity, lost if I had to witness them go under, but alas again. I manage to grab a handful of hair as one almost goes under and they stop their decent into the ground, as if in a trance, looking straight at me, unblinking in wonder of one who directs them to something other than the course they were prepared to follow, even unto their own immediate demise..
With the person still suspended mid-ground, another look proves my efforts insignificant. I am but a man, with feet trapped myself, how am I expected to be a God, what is a God, if trapped?
Unyielding, I struggle as tears of blood run down my face, with my hand already affixed to the first person, who still just stares. I grasp another and then another and a fourth, until my four hands now hold four humans, shells of the people they once were. But for the weight, the infernal weight, I might have succeeded. Instead now I only sink.
Deeper into the void, where millions have gone before me.
As the darkness envelopes me, I dream of happy things.
"It isn't so bad here" I say to myself.
Now I sleep and be one.
