Grief
It's been on my mind for a while...
I am stuck in a maze, looking for a key to open a locked door.
I have wandered this maze countless times over. I know it’s stained walls and cracked floors by heart.
The key is somewhere in here.
There is a grief within me that has festered for too long. It consumes my every waking moment, lingering in the corners of every room I occupy.
I don’t know when it entered my life, or how it managed to spread to such an extent.
But it has woven itself so intricately into the very core of my being, that I can no longer imagine myself without it. It has become a part of me, and I cannot bare to part with it.
I look at my beloved, alive and well, and I see the urn I will one day decorate with all the flowers I could never surround her in, lest she eat them all and fall ill.
I see the way she will look at me in her final moments. I will always see her as the little ball of sunshine she was the day she came into my life, full of energy and a determination to see the world.
But she will never know that.
It is lonely in this maze. There’s no one here but me.
I have heard many a story about mazes like this.
Some find their keys.
Some don’t have to. The door isn’t locked.
Some don’t have to search. There’s no door, just an opening.
And some, lucky bastards, have never been in a maze before.
I look at my stuffed animals, soft and warm, and see them rotting away, abandoned once I’m long gone.
They’re so soft…
I look at my books. Some, I’ve read countless time over. The Hunchback of Notre Dame had to be taped back together. Lord of the Rings is waiting for repairs, but I don’t know if I’ll get around to it now. Fox in Socks has holes in its pages. I don’t remember how they got there.
But I remember how I used to really love that book. I was great at the tongue twister about tweetle beetles. Knew it by heart.
It’s long since faded from my memory, but the love I once had remains.
I look at the places I have poured my life into, and see… stuff. So much stuff. And to anyone aside from me, it all means nothing.
I dreamed of being many things. But time has taken its toll, and I am not who I once was. I yearn for the lives I could have lived, crave for opportunities that may never come my way. I sit, alone, and stare at a face that has become unfamiliar. I have watched it age into something foreign. My eyes are more sunken than I remember. There is less light in them than before. My skin is soft enough, but if I look close enough, I can see it rotting away.
I am not the person I thought I’d be.
I’ve been wandering in this maze for longer than I can remember.
I know, deep down, there is no key. There probably never was one.
I will never unlock that damn door.
But I have my pride, my dignity, my ego… and it is fragile. I have been searching for so long, it would be embarrassing to stop now.
So I’ll keep searching, however aimless it might be.
I have been living my life waiting for loss to come my way.
Maybe it will prove that all this grieving meant something. That I haven’t put myself through this for nothing.
The key is somewhere around here.
It must be.