Why I Fight

The Rabbit Hole is a weird place.  It's weird when you're standing at it's precipice, toes hooked around the edges, staring down with the experienced knowledge that one little shuffle and you're in it, in free-fall (alternatively, one big leap and you're on the other side, safe for at least a heartbeat longer).  It's weird when you lean in and let go.  It's weird when you're plummeting down it, not sure where the end is; not entirely convinced that there is an end.  And it's half impossible to get out of until you hit the other side- wherever that is.

It's exceptionally weird when you are trying to climb back out of it.

The Rabbit Hole is a weird, weird place; and one which I am intimately familiar with.  I've spent my fair share of time there, in varying states of well-being (mental, physical, emotional, you name it)- sometimes wallowing, sometimes resting, sometimes hiding, waiting, wandering, healing, hurting, pacing, bracing, desperate.

The one constant there, here, is that I fight- whether I am in it or not, falling or flying.  Every day I fight the Hole, I fight myself, I fight everyone around me.  I would fight the world if that's what it took.

Every day I fight for the privilege of counting myself amongst the living.  Every day I fight to move as many steps forward as I can muster because who knows when I will find myself taking ever-more steps backward, tripping, and starting that soul-numbing slide toward

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Every day I fight.

I fight because I have a family that loves me.  I fight because maybe I will someday have a family of my own.  I fight because I have a little blond dog who likes to jump on me, bark at me, and snuggle me when I'm feeling down.

Some days I fight simply because it seems like the thing I should do.  I fight because I'm contrary- the disease that kills me comforts me, and I hate that so I make it pay by fighting.  I fight because I feel like I should be above this bullshit by now- even though I know that I never can be, not fully.  I fight because weakness annoys me, not because death scares me.

I fight because I like a challenge- I thrive when I fight.

I fight because if I don't, I'm done.