“Get up!”
My body stirs, a cracked portrait of futility.
“I can’t.”
“I don’t want to hear no can’ts, get up you sonofabitch!”
I push myself up, my hands pressing into the dirt, gravel forcing its way between my scraped fingers.
“I’m exhausted. I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m done.”
“Whatever brought you here is behind you. You have no choice, you must go on. What counts in this life is what you can do after you’re exhausted. Sorry to say it my friend but life begins right here for you.”
I lift my head, straining against the sinews of my neck that are determined to keep my face in the mud. Rain trickles down my forehead and into my eyes, a bittersweet sting.
As slowly I unfurl my hunched shell of a body, my vision clears. I take to my feet and look around me. Through the mist and drizzle I see – nothing. Nobody.
That voice – “Not much of a view is there?”
“Where are you? Who are you?”
“Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Then it doesn’t matter where or who I am. Listen to me. Trust me. Now move.”
My body rebels against my brain’s subdued appeal and my foot takes a faltering step. The mud squelches underfoot and I stumble, suddenly propelled forward by a sharp shove between my shoulder-blades.
I expect to see the ground rushing towards me but all that hits my face is the rain. I turn; nothing. I make sure of my balance, take a step and once again feel a hand on my back, firm, but this time reassuring.
He whispers to me, “It starts here. Let’s go.”
We walk, step by faltering step. The rain our ever-present companion, the mist a shroud across the landscape. A cold wind whips across my cheeks, biting into sallow flesh. Any life that exists out here remains hidden, beyond our knowing.
All that is here is the path.
Yard by yard it reveals itself. My aching feet follow.
There is no beast to carry my burden, the weight of my ever-present past slowing me down, throwing doubt over any certainty that my step should find.
I stop.
A figure emerges through the mist, crouching by the path, shivering in the unforgiving cold. The man raises his weathered face and looks at me, a young man aged by circumstance.
“Hey, where you going?”
His voice is strong, demanding, defying his tired form.
An involuntary snort escapes me.
“Wherever my next step lands.”
He looks beyond me and gestures with a flick of the head.
“Still thinking about what you’re leaving behind huh? I hear ya brother. Listen, I been getting lonely out here, how about we walk together, see where this road here takes us?”
Starved of connection the prospect of companionship thaws any objections, melting them before they take form.
“Sure, why not.”
We walk. As time passes with the sun’s rise and fall we pace, our stride purposeful. Small talk gives way to laughter and lamentations of broken pasts clear the way for promises of a future destination.
At night we rest, our bodies and minds grateful for the chance to recuperate, thanking us with a rising wellspring of strength with which to face each new day.
Until I wake alone.
I call out. Silence echoes around me.
My body melts into the ground and my spirit drains into the earth. As my cheek touches sharp gravel a sudden wind whistles and a fluttering reaches my ear. I see the paper, a note waving from underneath a nearby rock.
“This is where we part. You’re a good man but I seek a different horizon. My journey is one I must take alone. Farewell brother.”
Loneliness wraps itself around my torso, squeezing, squeezing, my breath escaping in a shallow wheeze. The cold re-enters my body, stiffening limbs, softening will.
“You’re not alone.”
The voice, quiet, subdued.
“Hear me – you are not alone.”
The voice lifts me to my feet and I am beckoned once again to the path.
I walk. Step by faltering step, I walk.
The path steepens, my solitude deepens; silence envelopes me, punctured intermittently by a whisper, “I’m here.” The path is straight but I have no direction. Left foot, right foot. Left foot. Right foot.
When tired I am taken by the hand, guided in my step, beckoned to continue.
And then, the mist rises.
Suddenly before me, the path stretches, reaching toward a new horizon, towards hope. Towards the beginning. Steps become strides and color floods the landscape, rolling fields frame the path and birds sing, only for me.
I stop for a moment to allow my starved senses to satiate their appetites; stillness speaks. I am nowhere, and it’s now. Everything begins here. I close my eyes and allow the possibilities to engulf me, my mind carried away by a sea of opportunity. And as I open my eyes I see…. Him.
He is striding towards me – his focus resolute and distant, beyond and through me, reaching back into the mists.
“You’re going the wrong way.”
The words form in my mouth but my lips remain closed, the words swallowed, lost in the bowels of words unsaid.
He breaks into a run and is gone, swallowed by the receding mist.
“What’s he doing? That fucker left me alone so that he could reach the horizon, why the fuck is he going back there? What’s the matter with him?”
“You don’t need to know, it doesn’t matter.”
“He’ll get hurt; why’s he heading back along the same path?”
“Each of us must walk our own path; we may share it with another and for a time we may head in the same direction, but we all face different challenges along the path. Until we face those challenges, until we learn the lessons that the path intends for us to learn, the horizon we seek will remain forever out of our reach. We may run, we may avoid our challenges, but the truths that our path intends for us to find will whisper inside of us; the path will call to us, it will find a way to draw us back to face our challenges until we confront and conquer them.”
“And me? Will I reach my horizon?”
“My friend; you have heard my voice. Your horizon lays before you, have no fear. You have everything you need. Just listen. And walk.”
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Originally published on Love, Laugh, Truth and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Ales Krivec on Unsplash