The Open World

Sometimes when the walls are crushing in on me I start to think that I'll never be free...

There came a time in my life that while it was extremely painful and lonely... I felt free. I didn't have a boyfriend, school wasn't worrying me, I don't even remember if I had a job or not. And I felt like I was at the edge of a precipice. Like I was looking down into an abyss of nothing. And I was so empty the winds of infinity flew through my body, reminding me of every hollow cavern. And it hurt, I was empty, afterall. I was lonely, I was alone. But I could breathe.

I felt like I could close my eyes, reach as far as I wanted, and I would find nothing. I felt unfettered. I was free-falling. There were no anchors, nothing was concrete, the world didn't exist. I was ephemeral.

And it was such a horrible thing. And it was such a wonderful thing.

I was alive.

But some part of me, I'll call it the adult part of me, felt like I was hurting for nothing. That I was allowing the winds to ravage me without any protection. And so I built walls of responsibility around me. I built walls of real dirt and substance around me to remind me that the earth was there. I touched the walls to remind myself that I was there.

And I've lived there. I'm living here. With each foot and hand and eye fixed on something real, fixed on my protection. To remind me: I'm here, I'm safe, I exist. And it all felt like the right thing to do. It all felt like the right thing to do.

But I think somehow, in the process, I've forgotten to remind myself of one thing: Am I alive?