How do you decide when you have gone too far, when there's no more in your being to give, when you've exploited your feelings to the point of endangering your sanity? When is it time to call it a dead end and choose another path, maybe not any better than the last you walked on but a new one nonetheless? Perhaps that last road was on the verge of improvement, and your failure to persist only drove you to a painful new beginning. But perhaps there is no more heart left to invest on this road; perhaps you have given it your all and it has instead driven you away, driving you in circles until you are forever fatigued. How much can you give away until you lose yourself, until your being yearns for the glory of the past, grasping at it to no avail and in this way failing to understand a life on any other path but the one that it is on? How long can the memories of the past create such hope that you neglect the pain you feel deep within the core of your soul; how long can you suppress tears of neglect and rejection that will forever be unexpressed for there is no sympathy in the cold rational eyes of the blind? Even if one was to discover that the path is now unusually pleasant, how long will that last until one is again welcomed by the rugged terrain of the pain? How long can one lie to oneself and claim a better and safer future which hangs from a thin string and is in no way safe from the adversities of life? Is one subject to the penalty of abuse when one is responsible for the endurance and willingness of offering up the last fragment of love one had for oneself? Surely God will penalize those who give themselves to the absurdity of blind love. When will our eyes be open and our mind susceptible to the reality that we are victims of the suffrage of the human heart? We are on the road to destruction, clinging still to the promises of a better future, following the path in faithfulness that exceeds our blindness. And at the end of this winding path we come to the jaws of loneliness, the jaws of deceit and utter sadness, blindly walking into its open jaws and finding delight in the warmness of hell as we spend our lives alone in the silence of solitude. Perhaps we were better off turning back and finding a better road, but what road could end better than the very one we know the ending to. For we know the results of our faithfulness to the terrible path can lead to nothing good, yet as lambs to the altar we go willingly, dressed in the purity and innocence of joy with whom we are accustomed to. We take pride in the purity of our feelings, the unfamiliarity to the pains of the path. Yet we perceive a danger ahead, our instincts tell us there is something more to this path than the white bliss yet we block such thoughts from our perception and walk blindly, in faith, in love to the altar, to the point of no return where our fates are decided not by the unprejudiced God but by the immoral minds of the people we truly trust. But it is unnecessary for them to tear our limbs for we do this ourselves with the pain that is thrashing in our black hearts and we feel our eyes open to the charcoal world we live in. For we are no longer white lambs of innocence but are tainted by scarlet stains of our own blood, and even the rains of time which gush in torrents cannot remove the stain of betrayal. It is a part of us now and we wear it in shame like the brand of Cain.