When Worlds Collide

Finding a Path

     I am alone. I am not scared, though. Or, that's what I tell myself. Funny how when you become an 'adult' the person you lie to the most is yourself. I am not afraid. Nothing is going to happen to me.

Nothing is going to harm me. I am safe. I am safe. It's not your fault. These words keep cycling in my head, as I shiver from the cold. The truth, however, is a hard and painful stone deeply rooted in me, weighing down on my chest.

It's all my fault. Everything is on me. I shouldn't have done it. But I was desperate. I shouldn't have done it. If I hadn't-......

It's too late now. There's no going back to the past. The only way is forward. Figure out how to survive. I have to live. That's the only way to pay for my crimes.

     I try to stand, but my body refuses to listen. It's stiff from the hours curled in on itself, shivering from the cold. The hot air refused to enter my lungs.

I am only getting enough air to stay alive. But I know, I need to move. Need to get out of here..... Where is here?

It's dark. Darker than anything I've every experinced before. They say that it's always darkest before dawn, but this is worse. The dark shadows that dance before your eyes in the dark can't even appear. I scoff.

I am truly alone. I think to myself, as I begin to be able to move my frozen body. It's not much but at least I can move enough to stretch. Maybe that will help.

With a few grunts, and popping sounds, I regain some mobility. I remain a little stiff, however. I unsteadily rise to my feet and look around.

It's dark. Darker than anyonr could possibly imagine. And I am alone. There is no one else here. They've gone, and I doubt I'll ever see or hear from them again.

     The question is; when you can't see a thing, where do you go? Which direction do you walk in? Is it safe to randomly choose a direction? I hear myself let out a bitter laugh.

Is anything ever going to be safe again? I was told over and over again to avoid-.... It's too late. I need to stop thinking about then and focus on now.

Now, is where I am. Not that I know where it is that I am. I start walking, thinking that any direction is better then staying here. If it gets darker, then maybe it will end.

If it gets lighter, well, then I can keep moving. That's what I need to do. I need to keep moving. Until there's no more strenght in my body, I will walk forward. I sigh, the things that need to be done are too numerous, and I am much too few.

Walking, in the dark, alone. I have done what needed to be done, the person I was yesterday gone. I am too different. I cannot go back.

So I walk forward, in this dark, alone. Forever. That's a word that doesn't mean what it used to. What the world had once believed it to.

But the old word is what it seems like. I've been walking forever. In this dark, alone. Nothing has changed. At least, not in this 'forever.'

My legs hurt, and it's no longer from the stiffness caused by the cold. I have been walking forward.... Or, sideways, from my original location? Either way, I have been walking 'forever.'

I begin to wonder, in my head. Wandering around my thoughts. But they are so different, now. So changed. They belong to a stranger.

I am no longer who I used to be. I am changed. And alone. I didn't use to be. I was who I was. And together.

Not that it makes any difference, now. Perhaps, who I was would cry. Not understanding how it came to this. How it all became so wrong. And changed.

Perhaps, I would try and change the out come, so I never found 'my' path. It wouldn't work, of course, but who I was would still try. I would have said, 'pre-ordained fate is bullshit. We make our own path, with our choices.'

But that is bullshit. No matter what I did, how I fought, it would still end up at this path. The path chosen for me before I was even conceived. There was no other 'choice.'

     Perhaps, I did know. In some small, hidden, corner of my mind. Maybe that's why I decided to take the job half-way across the world from everybody, and anybody, that I knew. Perhaps, they knew.

My family. Maybe that's why they had me take it. Had me keep it so close. Becuase it was mine, and my burden to bear. No one else capable, of even trying to carry it long enough to give me a break

Even if who I was accepted that this was my path, I wouldn't have done it there. With them. With us. I would have gone somewhere... Alone.

That way there wouldn't have been such a tragedy. Then, maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't be alone. It was too late now, though. I had to keep going forward.

- I will keep adding more later, but I think I will take a break for now