The years passed, and John never realized their true weight, and his mind raced as the soul-crushing realization reverberated through his entire existence. A dull ringing slowly overwhelmed his every sense, and the silence of his small room deafened him in a way it never had before. For years he sought to lock himself away, to find some warped kind of respite in this place. Yet it brought nothing. Doubt. Fear. Anxiety. His story was told in cliches to put misbehaving children in their place. Lest they turn out like him.
He gave his story freely to everyone that crossed his path, meanwhile keeping nothing for himself. His thoughts ineffable. His doubt became his war cry. Rallying him to battle so he could rest assured that he was in the wrong. And rally he did. Night in and night out. Resting completely assured that there was no escape. Every faux-pas carefully disassembled, diagnosed, and labeled then quickly buried. Only to be resurrected again and again. A sickness that addeled the mind and weakened the will took root. In his depths it festered.
Darkness punctuated by brief glimpses of light and color. So temptingly close. A drowning man heaving and grabbing for a breathe, his goal maddeningly close. His hand crests the surface, as a warm breeze carresses his outstretched fingers. "I could almost breathe," he wept, as he faded from consciousness. John realized those fears he'd placed so much credence in meant nothing. No one would remember his failures. Nor his achievements.
He had spent so much time working to feel 'normal'. So much time not trusting his own thoughts. It was an all consuming hollow feeling that pervaded his every waking moment. He had but one defense mechanism. Shut down and just exist. An existence based on tuning out and turning off. He could no longer cram his square peg into societies round hole. His had nothing left to fight with. So he shut down, and one grey listless day led to the next. All his hard work had left him voiceless, and he suffocated in that realization.
The ringing overtook him completely now, and he gasped for air. In that moment a clarity filled him that he had never experienced. His body tingled as he began to cast it all aside. All the doubt that underpinned his entire existence fell away in the realization that he alone controlled himself. His existence alone bestowed him with free will, even if he had never chosen to exercise it.
In that moment, all of John's life came into focus, and a glimmer of light leapt from his eyes as the thought caressed his synapses, and he knew the time had come.