I don't know what it is about this early hour on this early May morning that suddenly finds my brain aching to write something. Neither do I know what it is I'm supposed to write. I think it just has to be something but the actual topic is irrelevant.

Irrelevant.

That's a word that I've used a lot over the past several weeks and months and even years.

So something has happened. Something bad. A beast bore down upon me, and I saw it coming and I stood my ground and I fought with everything I had.

I lost.

People tell me that I should have never bothered to fight. That I should have ran at the first sign of trouble. That it was futile from the start. This is their way of telling me that they think I've been stupid for a long time.

It's easy for people to cower safely inside their own lives and pretend to understand. It's easy to smirk and shake your head when you've never had anything worth fighting for. Worth living for. Worth dying for.

People tell me that this is a good thing. That now I can finally move on.

Those people are irrelevant. Their opinions are irrelevant. Their advice is irrelevant.

Maybe I could never see the forest through the trees, but at least I was in the damn forest. And now, battered and bloody, I struggle to crawl my way out.