How Bad Do You Want the Cheese?

I am a mouse in the middle of the gigantic labyrinth. I smell the cheese—I think it’s cheddar—but the stronger the aroma, the more dead ends I encounter. I am getting really frustrated with all the obstacles I need to cross in order to win my prize. I have been in this labyrinth for far too long damnit! I think to myself as I turn around the dead end and try another undiscovered path. I wonder if my other fellow mice feel the same way as I do.

Honestly, at this point, I am starting to enter into panic mode. The fibers that are barely holding me together are becoming unhinged one thread by one. Does God hate me? What did I do wrong?

I know I have the strength to keep on plugging through this maze. But losing sleep, getting sick, and constantly stressing about every minute of my day is not going to help me reach my goal. I cannot fail now. Not when I have come this far and endured so much.

I hate to always sound overly dramatic in always writing about my situations I encounter, but this is how I decompress the pressure I seem to be under. Like I have mentioned in the previous blogs: The pen(or in this case, the laptop) is the writer's scalpel. The only problem with this situation, a mouse in a maze, is I have another added variable to make the obstacle that much harder: I have a companion following me in this cheddar quest. I have a roommate.

I have known her since our first week at Biola University. She has helped me through a lot of once-difficult trials while attending the school. She, and our other mutual friends we met while attending the school, has grown very near and dear to me. However, upon my moving in, things seem to be falling apart at a more frequent rate; and the hardest part to my breakdown is that I am bringing someone down with me. And I am doing everything I can to keep her afloat, even if I have to submerge myself underwater to keep my dear friend from drowning.

Yesterday, I failed my Life and Health Exam. I studied my tail off for this exam, and when it came time for Judgement Day…I missed the mark. I did not shed any tears, but it put me in a weird contemplative state to where I am now contemplating almost every move I have made in my life within this past year. Is this what encountering a breakdown is like? If so, why isn’t God here to deliver me, or at least show me direction in my next step?

I thought I did good enough for the test, but obviously it’s going to take a more fervent effort to pass this major obstacle. With this job, I am promised an amount that will assist in making things in my life right again. It will be a path that will reward me a small sample of what success tastes like when I eventually make my way into the TV industry.

The one thing that rests in the back of my head in midst of all this: How bad do you want the cheese? It tempts me like a mirage in the middle of the Sahara desert. I can smell it’s pungent aroma, it has the strong scent that has enough power to make even my whiskers salivate with an indescribable longing. I thought I wanted this, but one of the new lessons I am learning in this City of Angels: I am going to have to want this more than anyone else if I am going to get by and survive while doing everything I can to make my life, as well as my living situation, right again. Maybe that will be the key to solving this labyrinth.