Journey

Journey                                   

                                                                              As I make this climb I know that there is something ahead that I want to find, that I have to find. This journey is hard, stumbling over rocks and boulders that are in my path as I push through the brambles and thorns. My feet slipping on the wet and the pebbles. Sometimes the path is easier and less encumbered but still always up. Everything is gray, not dark really but not without light. There is no sound, no movement or anything to shows life, nothing that I can feel that is living. The gray is like a blanket surrounding me, not touching but moving as I move. There is no sun, it is neither warm nor cold, and I am not wet or dry. It is dismal, as I climb.

From time to time I find myself at the edge of a cliff, a precipice really but just a step away along a branching path. I step to the edge looking down, I cannot see the bottom. It’s shrouded in the same mist that lines my path.  Stones that I have dislodged fall soundlessly and never hit bottom. I think for a moment that maybe; just maybe it would be easier if I just step off. I could feel the wind blowing past my face as I flash down toward the long dark. That would tell me at least for that instant I am still alive but stepping back I turn and continue on the journey for I am not ready to give up just yet.

Part of what drives me on this quest is the momentary flashes of light I see way ahead. Just a flash of golden sunlight with the promise of warmth and peace. Only a flash but that flash is enough to start the warmth again within my soul knowing that there is a chance, slim as it may be still a chance at once again feeling the heart and soul expanding warmth.

As I push through the thorns I do not feel as they tear at my skin, I do not bleed outside. My bleeding is inside where the scars and fresh wounds are trying to heal. Sometimes a sharp point will tear at the wound and the blood will flow. Fresh pain at the memory of what caused this wound nearly overwhelms me and then subsides as I push the feelings back behind me into the gray of memories.

Everything is seemingly dead in all directions. Maybe what I see is the unrealized what if or what could be and is not really dead. The light that I see as I toil is black to gray and gray to black. There is nothing behind me, nothing pushing me. Sometimes I feel fear from the injuries of the past but it is short lived and I push it back to where it came from.

When I do look behind I see little but uniform gray. Only memories back there because it is the past. What is behind never gets closer nor does it get further away. What is there is all the pain and heartache, all the betrayal and disillusionment that was once my life. There is immense joy back there as well like a spark in the gray but again… it is the past and I can no longer touch it.

Ahead is out of focus and grey because it is unknown unlike the past. The path branches left and right many times and many places, the same gray, the same stones and boulders, the same trees and thorns. It is my choice which way to go, to turn or to keep on ahead. There is no path leading back. I can linger. I can stay right where I am with the past against my back and the future in front, in my bubble of now but if I do not move nor does it.

There once was life here, everything along the path once had life, was once green. I can see the dead grass. I can see the blades and the branches as well as the bushes and trees that were once alive and green. They now are uniformly gray like everything else. A shade darker than the stone path. That is how I find my way the lighter path to the light.  I want it to be green again, with sun and wind and blue sky. This is what I labor for, this is where I am heading. 

2/15/15