Somewhere along the way you realize you’ve strayed. You stop, turn around, and realize that you’re not sure you’re going on that well-drawn path you took many years ago. You don’t know exactly where you are, or how you got to where you are now. There were intersections, shortcuts and you don’t know if you went the wrong intersection or one of the shortcuts is wrong, but you know you’re not where you should be.
You don’t even have a map, you lost it a long time ago along the way, but you know you should have been in a much better place. Because once upon a time you had dreams and you headed towards them, sure that you can achieve everything you imagine.
You just had no idea the road would be so thorny. That you will have so many crossroads in front of you, shortcuts that offer themselves. And then you had to make decisions without having time to think well. You didn’t know what was behind which intersection or where which shortcut would take you. Now you know that many decisions were wrong. That many of the people you met who extended their hand to lead you had masks and led you in the wrong direction.
You realize that you lost a part of yourself somewhere along the way. You have changed, grown up, matured but you are missing something. That innocence in you is dead. She was killed by beasts that you met on the way and that you barely survived. You no longer cry because of a sick, abandoned animal. The tragedies you hear do not affect you as they used to. Once upon a time you thought the world could be fixed, that it could be a better place with less evil and more love. Now you know it’s not like that, so you just shrug helplessly, shake your head.
Now you know you can’t fix anything. You don’t even have time, because you have to survive in this world of evil yourself. You are no longer even sure if you are going towards the same goal. Do you still want what you once wanted? What has changed in the meantime around you, what has changed in you? You don’t know, and you don’t even have time to find out because there are new crossroads in front of you, new decisions are waiting for you to make them. You have to hurry because time passes and you have a long way to go.
And she would rather turn and wander far into some wilderness, into some hut. Alone. Somewhere where there are no living human slaves. She would sit on the grass and look into the distance. She would let the sun caress your cheeks and squint defiantly at one eye. She would smile peacefully. She would smile to herself. She would be silent and listen to the silence. You wanted to keep quiet. You wished no one asked you anything and you didn’t ask anything. You wished you didn’t need anything, that you didn’t need anything. You miss yourself.
You wanted to apologize to yourself. Ask yourself how you are, do you need anything, what would you like. But you don’t have time. Morals and needs are ahead of your desires. And you have to keep going. To create a new map, draw some new coordinates and try to find them. Only now you know that the map will not be of much help to you, because someone else is drawing the right paths. It closes one, opens the other.
You know so little is in your hands. That you’re just a powder that every wind can take wherever it wants. But that doesn’t mean you have to stand still. You have to have a goal and you have to move forward. You always have to move forward. No matter how big the obstacles are, the beasts are terrible, the winds are strong, you have to move on. And you have to hurry because time passes and dreams are waiting.
Mischievous Words by Marta 