Life's Not Fair

"Life's not fair".  I've heard that from birth.  People always told me that there was nothing I could do to change the hand I'd been dealt.  No way for me to change my fate.  All my life, I've tried to prove them wrong.  To show that I could make my life better.  But sometimes it feels like no matter how hard I try, I can never get anywhere new.

Sometimes I feel like I'm just a child, lost in a world I can't understand.  I feel like no one cares if I find my way, or if I stumble and fall in the darkness.  Sometimes I feel as if an ever looming shadow mocks my steps, following me, just waiting for me to take one fatal turn in the wrong direction.  I run and run, faster and faster, until I can't bear to run any further.  And yet, it's still there.  Always watching, always waiting.  Why won't it leave me alone?

I feel it in my skull.  That dark shadow, that ever present fear.  I feel it gnaw on my soul, boring through my heart.  I try to speak, try to scream, but it steals my words away, feeding on them and growing stronger.  It's not fair.  Why should I have to fight so hard to please everyone, just to make it go away?  Why should I have to suffer the fear of failure?  Why must I always feel as if I am not good enough?  As if I will never be good enough.....

It's not fair.  It's not fair.  It's not.....

But, I suppose fairness isn't something that is granted to everyone.  "Life's not fair."  That's what they've always told me.  The people I should look up to.  That I should trust.  "Life's not fair."  They don't see what it does to me.  This constant struggle to please them.  To show them that I am strong.  I try to be strong.  I believe I am strong....... I want to be strong.

But, beneath it all, I suppose I know that I'm only pretending.  I feel my will drift further and further with each passing year.  As the seasons grow colder, I can feel my heart sinking with them.  Of course, I stay aloft, just enough to keep going.  But still, it's there.  Clawing, gnawing, slashing, gashing.  It wants me to let it in.  It wants me to give up.  It wants me to admit that "life's not fair."  Not to people like me.  People who have always been different.  People who were never truly accepted by anyone.  People that never really fit in.  That have had to fight, and dig, and climb, and struggle.  For their whole lives.  Those poor people that never had anything just handed to them.  That always had to compete with someone better off.  Those people that have always been held under the bigger man's boot, always in fear that he would step down, ending everything.

"Life's not fair."  "Life's not fair."  How many times have I heard it before?  Ten?  Twenty?  No..... No, it's been so much more than that.  "Life's not fair."  Those three infernal words that haunt my thoughts, always poisoning my happiness, letting me know that at any moment, it could all end.  And all I can do is try to please the 'ones who make the rules'.  Why can't life be fair?  Why can't everyone know the same unending happiness?  Why must fear and loathing exist?  Will it ever change?

Change.  Yes, I want it to change.  I want life to be fair.  I want everyone to know love, and joy, and hope, and glory.  I want to dry the tears of every child that feels scared because they think they are not good enough.  To hold the hand of every person who ever felt that painful loneliness, and show them that someone cares.  I want to rise up against those who tell us "life's not fair," and show them that anything can change.  Anything can change.  If we believe it can.