It's not that I've stopped fighting; I've just recognized the fact that the fists I have used to pound against the steel wall have been reduced to stumps from my pounding, and aren't really fit to use anymore and worse, cannot be used to grasp any other tool as well.

So this becomes a mere pantomime, reduced to the spectacle of theater because I know how it will turn out, and I know what will be said, and I know what I will say in response. Only, I'm not allowed to say that because then I'm "being pessimistic," and not something else entirely that no one wants to talk about because it makes them uncomfortable. They are made uncomfortable because their mind itches and aches from trying to avoid recognizing the fact that I am saying my pool of Lifetime Potentiality has been reduced to naught--every possible path my life could take, that sum total number, has been reduced to a few miserable possibilities, none of which lead to a happy ending. So instead, I am told it is merely a "self-fulfilling prophecy" and not simple recognition of what is a very simple and apparent truth.

Cognitive dissonance is grand, ain't it?

So sure, I'll grind through and "keep trying," because I've got nothing better to do, but in the back of my mind is always the knowledge that I'm merely doing it for show because that is the only way anyone will ever believe, and it's only a one-way belief, not true understanding. It will only ever be viewed from the point of being a self-fulfilling prophecy and nothing else because to do so is to invite in very uncomfortable questions about oneself as the inner eye is naturally forever wont to conduct self-examination. It is, I am convinced, as natural as breathing in all of us because all of us need something to strive for.

When nothing remains to strive for other than farce and pantomime for the sake of show, and everything is revealed to be a hollow simulacrum of life, then what?

I have no answer.