Darkest Preceding the Dawn.

It's so close now I can feel it.
The deep, enforced silence of a long held breath is now punctuated by the anticipation of it's release. The frustration of a voice unheard for want of anything to say and a mind stimulated only by the echo of it's own emptiness is almost at an end.
The implications, not of that said, but of that left unsaid are magnified rather than diminished by the passage of time and transfer the gravity of their significance to the person least able to bear it. Even now in the shadow of inevitability it seems all this could have been avoided.
How did it come to this?
But it's almost over now, I am achingly close to the end, so near to the turning point of this. If I can just keep my focus long enough to breach the mental pain barrier and make it safely to the other side, then there is hope. This emotional wall is just another obstacle to be overcome on the path to becoming everything I could be or regaining some of that which I was.
It's true enough that I am a man compromised, a man who gleefully accepts any role offered to him or circumstance thrown at him which offers some kind of opportunity for engaging in industrious productivity in exchange for praise and positive reinforcement but I am not the slave I have turned myself into.
I have many duties but chief amongst them is my latest acquired purpose, that of keeping myself from thinking about things which don't concern me even if they happen to cause me concern.
The direct responsibilities of this duty as charged are burden enough.
The post held, being that of Chief Adjudicator in a case of conspiracy to complicity in an act of negligence through implied unquestioning obedience by mutual consent.
The accused is myself and I don't need a jury of peers to tell me I'm guilty.
However I don't intend to punish myself. I have served enough time already for a different crime and am satisfied that my debt has already been paid in advance and my rehabilitation into society is complete.
So I am finally leaving this mental prison of my own construction, an early release on parole for good behavior and as I step through the gates and return to the reality of the outside world, I know that I don't ever intend to go back to that place again.
Welcome back to freedom, I've missed you.