Guilt

Even if you feel it in the slightest traces, it's infuriatingly difficult to cast away. It claws at your heart, sets your sinews on fire, forces all the nerves under your skin inwards, towards the bitter struggle going on inside your mind, making them oblivious to everything outside.

You want a way out. But guilt never lets go. You have blundered your way right into the hands of a massive welding machine that drills its way here and there within your heart. Or more scientifically and less poetically, within your brain. But either way, its path is guided by the screams of anguish from those parts that hurt the most. The welding machine, it seems, knows by heart the locations of the largest wounds, and its tip is sometimes ready with something extra: unwelcome helpings of salt.

You are lost within a massive maze, with signboards blaring at every point: 'solution'...'valid reason'...you rush onwards with their guidance, of course, but often meet dead ends around the corners. And even if that is not so, and you instead find the exit, the welding machine comes back for a second attack, drilling you all the way into yet another maze.

You search for distractions. Something new...a new beginning...a painkiller. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The cool customer doesn't let go easily.

Sometimes you find yourself getting used to the attacks, the stabs of the welding machine drop within the tolerance zone. But still then, the vacation is only temporary.

Guilt doesn't recognize eternal dismissals.