THE KNOT THAT WILL NOT GO AWAY

I struggle to breathe. It feels as though I am drawing air through a rusted sieve, and every breath scratches me from within. Anger surrounds me like a thick, suffocating smoke that stings my eyes and constricts my breathing with a knot in my throat, like a foreign hand determined to prevent me from speaking. It is late. The night clings to me like a wet garment, while hunger and thirst gnaw at my ribs like starving dogs. I no longer have the patience to listen to anyone — the voices of others now seem to me like nothing more than empty echoes, sound preserved in tins but stripped of any soul.

I think: what is the point? The bitter thought settles inside me like a cold stone. What is the point of continually trying to push my way through the world with my forehead when the world always turns its back on me? Who else can dictate my life? Who else has the right to touch my thoughts, rummage through my senses, or chip away at my pride? At times I feel that everyone wants a piece of me, as though I were an old map that each person insists on redrawing according to their own wishes. And I ask myself, with a bitter taste on my tongue: if I allow myself to be controlled, what will remain of me? And if I refuse, why do I still feel that I am the one at fault? And yet, amid all this injustice flowing through the world like polluted water, I find myself asking what meaning any of it can have. At times it seems merely like a crooked lottery, in which the numbers are drawn by hands that have never even seen our faces. Others are given roads paved with light, while I walk across broken glass and am expected to smile as though it were warm sand beneath my feet. Life, as it is, sometimes seems like a joke told too quietly, one that only the powerful can hear to the very end. The rest are left with a missed punchline, carrying the bitter taste of incomprehension. Injustice settles upon the shoulders like a heavy, wet blanket that offers no warmth, only pressure. And I wonder whether the meaning of life might simply be learning how to breathe beneath its weight without allowing it to break us. Perhaps meaning lies in continuing even when everything seems like an elaborate cosmic joke. In moving forward, although the road is crooked and the signs have been placed by people who have never walked it themselves. In searching for a fragment of light in a world that distributes shadows with such generosity. And yet, within every injustice, I feel a question that bites into my heart: if life is so crooked, why do I stubbornly insist on straightening it with my bare hands? Perhaps because, despite the bitterness, I still believe that somewhere beneath all the layers of dust and disappointment there exists a meaning that reveals itself only to those who refuse to give up. Or perhaps meaning is simply this: not giving up, even when everything tells you that it would be easier to do so. And perhaps, in the end, meaning lies neither in justice nor in injustice, neither in the way the world crushes us nor in the way it lifts us. Perhaps meaning is merely a shadow that moves alongside us, promising us nothing. A shadow that reminds us that we exist, even when no one seems to notice. Perhaps life is not a straight road but a succession of turns that we negotiate in darkness, our hands stretched out before us, hoping not to collide too violently with whatever lies ahead. And perhaps injustice is not an obstacle at all, but simply the inevitable scenery of this wandering. In a world that owes us nothing, the only thing that remains truly ours is the way we choose to move forward. With heavy steps, with a weary heart, with bitter thoughts — but still forward. Because however crooked everything may be, giving up has never brought us any closer to the light. And perhaps it is precisely in this stubborn determination to continue, despite all the cosmic jokes, that the only meaning we can truly call our own is hidden.