I’ve been thinking about knights and dragons lately. Wondering what a knight would believe once they started their journey and after it was over. Did they feel compelled by the dragon to act, to fight against all odds, to try and win when winning seemed like a far-flung fantasy? Did they go on this journey knowing the risks, the pain, the anguish they may experience? When a knight comes home, with scars and marks, do they let everyone know about the journey, the tribulation, the hurt and the pain? Would they tell a story of victory and triumph or costs and measured losses? I wonder if the knights would heal, from the pain inside and out, or let the scars of the fight die with them, that way the dragon does not claim another victim. What does the knight lose along the way to the dragon? Do they return a little less of themselves having done something so great? Does a knight need a dragon to be the hero they are meant to be? Can a knight be a knight with a dragon?

I’ve never asked for an easy life, an easy one sounded boring and banal, what I wanted was an adventure, to help others, to make the world a little bit better by leaving my mark on it. So I’ve set out on my own journey, like many others in kind, to find and learn to be better than anything I could imagine ever being. And sometimes, to be honest, this journey has kind of sucked. It’s never really been easy, and I don’t know why. I’ve had to fight my through everything, and I’m starting to believe that I’m pushing too hard for a thing I’m not meant to be.

It hurts so much, these dreams I carry on my back, which drive me from the nothingness to the light have also shackled me to my own form of hell. I do not regret having these dreams, but I fight and I fight against the coming current to feel like the stream doesn’t even want me there to begin with. That who I am is beginning to erode, and this path I was sure I was taking has started to crumble beneath my feet.

Can I run? Escape from this world for a second to catch my breath and become reinvigorated? If I were to take that much-needed reprieve would my dreams still be there when I return?

All I’m left with are questions, ones that I don’t know how to answer because I didn’t know the questions needed to be asked in the first place. I’ve tired and strained, my brain feels like it’s running on overdrive all the time. The only moment I seem to find reprieve from these burdens is I close my eyes to sleep, a dreamless sleep until I am forced to wake again.

I wonder about these knights because I have my face my own dragon and I’m wondering what will be left after I am through. Will I still be able to look in the mirror and see myself, or will I have lost so much from the fight that I become someone unrecognizable? I worry that I will lose parts of myself that I can never get back and that slaying the dragon, at the end of the day, won’t be worth it, that I will have lost too much.

I’m scared and tired, and I don’t know what to do. How did those knights, in those stories find their way?

I wish I had the answer, but I’ve been making it up as I go, maybe when this is all over I will have my own tale of knights and dragons, but for today I just have to fight and hope I don’t lose too much of myself along the way.