Years 6 to 10

You emerged when I did not need you

Or so I thought

Scholarly, devoted, and happy

I had what I needed

Or so I thought

Days were filled with disappointment and unattended resentment

Nights with discontentment, tears, and isolation as I recounted what I had not

Friends, family, purpose

My existence was futile and treacherous

You were a passing ideology, like so many before

Sensibility would cease to exist in my mind

My sanity was fragile

One test and it would shatter

But you showed me something nobody had ever showed me before

A world beyond myself

A world of illusions in which nobody can win

A world of suffering

Subject to aging and illness

Death and destruction

Doomed to our own action

You pitilessly took the part of me that I did not know I had left

Whatever will I had, you robbed

Until the end was perceivable

You shattered me into a thousand pieces

A thousand pieces who disintegrated into a microscopic shard

The rest you devoured into oblivion

Surreptitiously you were whispering all along

Telling me what I needed to hear

And in the end I emerged victorious

I transcended all the superficial layers I had previously occupied

Your torment forced me to rise through the restrictive planes that I thought I was content occupying

And then I rose

Like a Lotus flourishes after its conception in murky waters

And the phoenix rises from the ashes

And it did not stop there

You awoke my desire to give myself away

Every single shard of my vulnerable, glass self away

I was no longer worthy of my wealth, my abundance of comfort

So I gave it away to the suffering

In a funny way, I guess it all comes full circle

Suffering gives way to desire to end suffering

O captain, my unlikely captain

How you have exposed me to the wicked I wish I did not know

Pain,

Suffering,

Loss

I owe everything to you