An Analogy

It has not been a good day. But I came up with one way to help people understand what I'm going through. Visualize as you read:

You've been placed in a poorly lit maze- a labyrinth, if you will. You've been given simple instructions to follow the arrows, as they tell you exactly where to go, and they will lead you out of the darkness. No one mentioned how long the maze is, but they made it sound like it should be easy and take no time. But you are tired, and the walking makes you more tired, so you have to stop to sit a lot. You're wearing the wrong shoes and your clothes don't fit well. You forgot a flashlight and sometimes your glasses fall off, so you can't always see clearly. Even when you do walk and follow the arrows, sometimes you misunderstand the arrows (even though they're simple) or they seem to disappear, and you end up off the right path. The tangent paths are sometimes very short, or they can be long and it takes a while to find your way back, so you get frustrated easily. Sometimes you seem to know exactly where you're going and you can even see the light at the end of the maze, but that clarity doesn't always last. There are arrows and you should be able to follow them, but you can't always, and it makes you feel dumb and inept. You sometimes lose hope of ever making it out to the end, and you sometimes think it would be better to just quit walking.

As you walk in the maze, a soundtrack of people saying things to you and/or about you plays on loudspeakers. Oddly, everything nice or encouraging is said very quietly, and it seems like those pleasant thoughts aren't played as often as the put-downs and discouraging thoughts that blare constantly. Even when you go on a tangent path, you can hear the loudspeakers clearly. You strain to hear the positive words and when they're gone, you try really hard to remember what they are and to believe that they are true, but the bad words and ideas are so much louder and constant, and they're mostly in your own voice, so you get tired of trying to remember. Sometimes you just can't remember, or the loud, mean messages are all you can concentrate on- and you really start to believe that maybe they're the loudest because they're true.  You'd like some quiet so you can think, but it never comes, so you're jumpy and anxious. Every now and then, there are mirrors on the walls. Sometimes you stop to take a look, but mostly you shut your eyes as you pass them. You don't want to see how tired or frustrated you are, and even when you do look, you don't recognize what you see. You marvel at how someone who looks perfectly fine on the outside can be suffering so much on the inside. But then you focus on your eyes, and you see the sadness and the anger and the confusion.

You wish you didn't feel so alone in the maze. You really want someone to hold your hand. But then again, they might want to talk, and you don't want the talking to take away from your journey. Besides, you don't have anything interesting or intelligent to say.