With Every Light

From the beginning, the Battle of Evermore has always been about one unbelievable endeavor after another, fighting against something always unfulfilled, some compelling force guiding us towards an inevitable conclusion that try as we might it always ends the same: that they have left, and we are still waiting for that day then.

And upon this grew a deep frustration; a hatred that we could not control the outcome of what had been cast before us. We knew how this story would end. The unassuming hero gains the respect and admiration of those around him. The sudden spotlight breeds an out of control ego as power becomes as seductive as any drug imaginable. Nothing is sacred as we try to hold on to that glow, that rush that comes from being in control of everything and nothing at once. But the story you see played out before you is all told in the land of make believe. You never see what may be the real me; only what will keep us on the path to that one last fix to set us free.

However as we might, everything that I could have ever imagined and dreamed of came to be during my twenties. There is no more want or jealousy; there is nothing to be gained by fighting the imagination for evermore. I lived a hundred lifetimes of adventure in these moments and it still was never enough.

Every one of them left a hole in the world that could never be covered over. These were the ghosts that continued to drift in and out of my life, appearing at the most inopportune times as if to remind me of our continued failure to make good on that promise. And how I would come to irrationally resent each of them for the way it would always end. The glow is a terrible antagonist and one that could never be controlled.

Love boar birth to animosity, to ambivalence, and over and over the story would play out. The characters would change, but no one in the audience noticed the difference. Whether it makes a moment of difference for you, whether it brings some closure to the lives you once led. It is easier this way, the coward’s answer to any situation. To play the bad guy and ride off into the sunset, back turned to the consequences.

Our stories were meant to be great funeral pyres, infernos of emotion with thoughts of tomorrow be damned. They were never meant to be an ember slowly fading away. But each of our adventures together leaves a mark on the soul, what we should have done and those we have failed. Because it’s never enough, what we do, try as we might, we were never going to save them all. In that moment though, a hesitation forms, of revenge and anger, of the fractured shell of an empty man, waiting for the story to begin again. Because of love. Love always remains. We feel emotion and all the joys and dangers of it because we love, and in the end that is all that matters. They may be gone, but their ghosts will always remind you of the story you once wrote together.