My progress never goes as fast as I want it too. It takes a step forward, two steps back. One avenue expands into a whole new world; whilst the other withers away, shut off and firmly closed to any future exploration.
Being at a cross roads is never as simple as making a decision. You don’t just pause, pray for guidance, deliberate and point your finger toward what feels right. It is a hard moment, a heart breaking one. Choosing between different selves of you, knowing that either path means a death of self. You want to stay at that crossroads forever, you want to run away from that cross roads as much as you want.
You become at odds with yourself, you hate yourself. All the people cheer you in one direction or another. Remember: you have to live with yourself no matter where you go.
These paths branch out like trees, winding and twisting into the horizon. I haven’t a clue where they end up (like I ever would). Only love, will stop me. Only love will guide me.
The voices tell me to do this or that, the voices of my own conscious become different entities entirely. But it’s only me, it’s only ever me.
I’ve made so many mistakes. I’ve grown and lived and died and now-
I’m at a crossroads.
an old mural I painted way back in 2008. COEXIST. (Taken with instagram)
Because they never were love stories.
The beatific unfurling of emotion was halted, the buds withered away. Never blossoming, never becoming brilliant blooms of emotion and sound before dying.
There are no love stories. I never get one, I never will have one.
Everything I never wanted, has now fallen into my lap. I have to lump it. My dream, my only dream, the only dream I ever asked for is let go.
I only wanted one thing, I didn’t want so many things. And all these things that I want to express-
Everyone tells me how sensible I am. How I am not taken in by love stories, how I am skeptical of knights in shining armour, how I never dream of unrealistic dreams.
But I have been dreaming for so long, I always thought that maybe, one day, that my dreams would come true. And inside, I am silly and weak and girly and the least sensible person you’ve never met.
I am all these things, but this sensible mind, this horrible, this cruel, this straight-laced and stoic world has told me that my dreams do not define me. That I am just another cut out and soon I’ll fall neatly into place.
My heart is jumping around the place, because I realize this is nothing I ever wanted.
My breath is coming out in short sporadic gasps, because I realize that I have been trapped the moment I grew up. The falsehood of freedom has presented itself to me so blatantly, but only now I realize what it is.
I can’t say no. Even though everyone says “of course you can say no!” But there’ll be a line of identical people parading down, ready to take me to slightly different golden prisons.
God…
I can’t do it.
I don’t know if I can really actually do it.
I am doing everything I promised my little heart that I wouldn’t do. And everyone will be happy, everyone will be so pleased, everyone will smile.
But I’ll hate myself inside forever.
And suddenly the giant moon in the sky beckoned them closer. It took over half the sky, and with childish naivete the young dark-haired girl, with stars in her eyes, thought that the sidewalk would lead her to it. She was only walking in circles, she is still walking in circles.
But now her Mother is no longer there to hold her hand.
She often felt bereft now, a tight knot of anxiety in the pit of her stomach. She’d always be tensed and worried, unable to hold onto friends. Too proud to cling on to them. New ones would crop up of their own volition, mistaking a pretty face as an invitation, and not as a warning.
Her lies would become more and more elaborate, sometimes she’d fall into bed with them. And the encroaching rays of morning, highlighting her shame would come again. Red rimmed eyes and bleary smiles would greet her, she would be sober and silent. Gathering her things and leaving, hating herself.
And then that evening, again, she’d look out to the moon. And today it seemed even more distant, even more miniscule. Her throat tight, she just wanted to start living. She watched the minutes, hours and days tick by on the clock. Wondering when her life would begin, waiting for the adventure.
It never came.
It never would come for her.
Some people are enamoured by landscapes, sheer drops, cuts in stones as massive as a Presidents hubris. Others subjugate themselves to the assault of orange leaves, and diamond snow. The gentle slopes of our little marble, the sensibility that accompanies nature.
But I have been enraptured by cupids bows, and fans of lashes. The pitches and intonations of words that escape endless universes; the tiny diamonds that dot the black holes trapped in milky blue mountains. How the plaintive twitch of your mouth indicates your sullen reluctance to smile at my visage.
Your hands, knobby and ugly. The purple birthmark on your shoulder, the way your stomach sticks out a little. No one wants to be miserable with someone else; but no one wants to be happy alone. These thousand dreams that flit beneath closed eyes. The lucid dreams, the other lives, the myriad of imaginative kisses and bows and flourishes.
All these imagined grandiose orchestrations I had planned so meticulously, the elaborate schemes.
And yet-
The simplest thing has made me happy.