~~~
As she fell she took in air with large
gulps, the panic overruling all thought as her body rolled rough
gravel and rocks, tumbling until she struck the grassy bank with a
final thump.
How odd,
she thought, that I'd be grateful for a grass stain.
But she was, if it meant the pain would finally be something in her
past. Something she could sweep under the rug that was her memory and
concentrate on furnishing the rest of the future with beautiful
things.
Alice
stood herself up and sighed, brushing the dust and dirt off of her
skirt as she stared at the world around her and wondered just how
she'd gotten there in the first place. She couldn't be consciously
aware of why she'd gotten on the train in the first place, even as
she watched the cloud of dust that was the retreating cars on rusty
tracks. Sometimes she even wondered how she'd gotten that far in the
first place, how she'd managed to even live thirty years of her life
without experiencing even a moment of it.
You
know, she thought,
there's no answer to that. There's no light in the fog and no end to
the tunnel.
And
there wasn't. She'd spent every last dime and sunk every last ounce
of her passion and drive into something that had never seen the light
of day. It was only a book- a silly, simple book about love and a lie
she'd never realized even was, and when she'd opened herself up to it
she'd found that it had died a long time ago. Trust was earned, and
when she'd found someone she'd loved enough to think they'd earned
it, they'd failed to be who she'd thought they were.
There
hadn't been anything she could do or anything she could say to make
it any less real, to make it hurt any less than it had. Than it still
did, when she lie there at night and let the world move on around
her. So running away had been the thing she did instead, because even
though it couldn't fix anything, the world inside her mind could make
everything seem so far away that it wasn't real anymore. When it
wasn't real, it didn't hurt. And when it didn't hurt...it didn't kill
that part of her soul she'd kept safe, that one remnant she'd managed
to hide away.
Maybe
I could just stop here, she
thought, and kicked her toe into the tufts of grass with a soft thud,
the curve of her shoe leaving a half moon in the soil that grew such
vividly green life across the vast nothingness. Maybe here
is where I'm making my last stand, and where I'll be remembered.
By
whom she would be remembered, she didn't know. There was no one left
who knew her, really knew her- who loved her the way she wanted to be
loved. There was no one who really understood her insanity, who could
hold her when she needed holding. But that wasn't the reason she'd
run, and it wasn't the reason she wanted to die. She didn't want to
live, didn't want to be in the world where people were so cruel and
unkind, who didn't understand difference. She'd been crazy in a good
way and colorful and kind, and to see no one understand it was to
find herself called naïve.
There's nothing wrong with
different, she thought, and
there's nothing wrong with naïve. Naive is just a word, and all it
means is that I think people can be better than they are, and that
there's no reason for anything but goodness.
Although she believed it, no one else seemed to, and although she
knew that everyone believed there was no need for someone to love
them, she wanted someone who only wanted her, and no one else. There
was a point where being strong was too hard to handle, and walking on
was far too difficult to muster the energy for.
No.
She didn't want to go like this, didn't want to give up in the middle
of nowhere with no one there for her. There were so many people in
the world, and many of them had the potential to be such friends and
allies. So many people had goodness and kindness and could see her as
a light even when she couldn't shine for very long before she
faltered.
But
that was why, she knew, that she was wonderful. She could live in
that world even knowing that people were always going to disappoint.
Not everyone would, but those who did...they were those that she
could never imagine would be as hopeful as she wanted to be. And that
was enough for anyone to live as long as they could- because hope
turned her world into something brighter. From an endless, grassy
plain...to anything she would ever want it to be.
Somehow,
as she spun around and looked at the sky, she knew that her hope
would be enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment