Living in a dungeon, are you?  “What?  Nah, not me.  I’m good.”  Guess what?  We ALL have one.  Some are small enough for one person and others have room enough for a large group of people.  Closing yourself off to others, spending way too much time alone, is even a dungeon.  It is exile.  Maybe your dungeon doesn’t really look like a dungeon at all.  Is that what you are thinking right now?  You are thinking dungeons are dark, cold, damp, and have a sense of dread about them.  You can smell the must and mildew as the vapors escape from their places of doom.  Smell that?  No Febreeze can cover that odor.  The coldness makes you shiver as you quietly draw your arms in closer to your body just to generate a little bit of heat.  Little chill in the air?  Having not seen any lights, you wander aimlessly in the dark, but you bump into walls, cursing to yourself, with no sense of hope anywhere.  Aren’t you tired yet?  Does this sound familiar?  Do you believe that all (I mean ALL) is lost?  Are you quitting?  If you have windows that you surround you, are they like one-way glass — you can see out, but no one can see in?  Do you feel safe in your place of dread?  Are you happy there?  Have you moved along through life, moving from one dungeon to another, and only temporarily stepped into the light?  Did you find yourself in another cave before you even knew what happened?  Maybe you wouldn’t recognize it as a dungeon, but if it feels like a dungeon, smells like a dungeon, and sinks any hopes you may have, it is a dungeon, people.  So now what?  Now that I have pointed out your possible suffering that no one else knows about, what can you do about it?  EVERYTHING!!!  Every time you continue to live within these hard, dark walls, you are making a choice.  YOU are choosing the dungeon.  The dungeon doesn’t choose you.  Why do you do that?  Because it is easy!!!  It is easier to complain about how bad things are when you yourself don’t care enough to change it.  Why should anyone else care more than you?  When you gripe about your life, some of you may hope to get others sucked into the “large party room in the back”  you have reserved for any future guests to your dungeon.  Know people like that?  Me, too.  Don’t invite me to your pity party — I won’t come.  At some point — and only you know when that point is — you will choose something different.  Maybe you will give yourself a deadline — “I change my life on (date).”  Maybe you put a condition on it — “If (action) happens, then I will change it.”  Maybe without warning, it will sneak up and hit you — “I’m done.”  Regardless of how or when, you will get there.  But you have to choose that you don’t want to live in the dungeon anymore.  You refuse to be a prisoner to the cave and the power it has over you.  You understand that if you stay in the dungeon, you will slowly die, miserable and forgotten by the outside world.  Is that how you want to live your life?  Whatever it is that is holding you down there, fight to overcome it.  Recognizing you are in the dungeon and wanting to get out are your first steps.  Can you do it alone?  Sometimes.  But most of us need help — whether it is an outstretched hand, a light you see, or an encouraging word.  You never give up.  it can be done.  Believe in the miracle of knowing that it doesn’t have to be forever.  If you keep fighting, eventually the dungeon will let you go.  But you choose.  “Every storm” by Gary Allan

Michelle A. Homme 2013 ©