at times

At times the pain of this literary cancer I have is almost more than I can bear.  If I don't tear my body to its core with physical exertion, if I leave even a little energy to think the weight of where I am and what I have done is too much for me.  I can forgive myself for my transgressions, but I cannot bear up under the loss.   The charade that I live for the sake of others mocks a real life.
The high tech materials that can go into this roofing are worth a mention.  There are times to get a cheap roof and times to get a high technology roof.  The transition lies in tatters on the ground, the old felt and the new synthetic that replaces it.  I originally envisioned the synthetic being ticker, but they are essentially the same, but one screams its insular qualities and its use of technologies of design, the other only to its ease of manufacture, low cost and basic, one dimensional functionality.  Time will tell.
Speaking of scraps, I find occasional scraps of would be poetic lines in my barely legible scrawl like this one:
"best ever, a combination of beauty and brains, good genes, good advice."  What did it mean and what would it have become if I'd had time, or perhaps just the creativity to finish it?
I keep thinking that the feelings which made me write this poetry would leave me in peace, an emotionless hulk, free of longing and jealousy.  Perhaps I will stop writing altogether, or just poems on new or historically relevant things.  In the book I'm reading there is a section on poems referencing the Atlantic and a discussion of those given concerning which body of water is at issue and whether the Tempest was inspired by events in the Atlantic islands off central America.  Perhaps I will write poems like that, I think.
But then i wake up, sleepless, empty or with with a false hope for the future that vanishes with the thin light of dawn and I will write out a few lines like blood.
I keep telling myself that at some point I have to run out of emotion, the well will have to go dry.  Then I say I will write out a list of love versus duty so I can force myself to action that will save me; but it never gets written.
The very things that make me look selfish are somewhat the opposite, but hard to explain.  A sense of duty and sacrifice but not from some noble sentiment.   A person with my views of reality should have no sense of responsibility, I should be a hedonist.
So what is this driving force.  For now, all I can figure is that it results from a selfishness driven by fear.  I don't know what I am afraid of since the results of the fear I have experienced have always been worse than any other cause, in this case taking away all that makes life worthwhile.  When I face my fear, the results are always extraordinary.  I've dealt with all of my metaphorical dragons, laying waste to them, their heads decorating the allegorical walls; I've written things I did not think myself capable, even defined things which seem novel enough to be worth keeping, perhaps even finding love.
Why can't I realize this and act?  What is the missing in me that prevents me from facing fear, taking it on for the rewards which are so obvious, it certainly seems logical that courage creates love and cowardice destroys it.