Out In The Clearing

I suck at describing so I'll just hope that there are people that are curious enough to read this.

I've had to hurt and lose to get where I'm at today.
Often I find myself wishing I would have taken the other way.

Taken the route back to the way things were.
The constant reminder that I can't, remains stuck like a burr.


Down that route I travel until at last I reach the end. I stop and look around and see a glimmer between the trees. What could be all the way out here? I walk towards it until I find a long forgotten path. Smiles, laughter and words spoken with out sound rush through my head. With every step I took the memories came flooding back. The memories I've tried so hard for so long to keep locked away. I've reached what seems like the end of the path.
I'm in a clearing with the sound of water trickling somewhere off to my left. There must be a Creek somewhere near by. As I look up, I see in the middle of the clearing stands a beautiful house. As I get closer, I see time has not been kind to this house, there's signs of neglect and disarray everywhere. The porch looks like it's about to collapse. Still it stands. I walk inside and I immediately know; I'm home. The sights, the sounds, the woodwork, every creak. It's all so familiar. I walk through and see everything I could have needed these past years right here. I wonder why I ever left. Everything was here, all I had to do was stay. What was it? The promise of something exciting? The whispers of something better? Whatever it was, it sure was alluring to the mind of a naive boy.

The years have come and gone. With those years have been people taking with them everything that's made this house a home. It feels empty and hopeless. As I'm walking around the house, I make my way upstairs and step on a loose floor board in the attic. Suddenly curious why there's a loose floorboard in an floor that's been proved to be pretty secure as I've walked around, I stop and kneel down to pry it up. It comes up with ease. I set the board to the side and look down and see an old pill bottle filled with wilted wildflowers, a story about a leaf, and a single picture. It's in these things that I find a faint beacon of hope. With the sun shining through the dusty window pane, I suddenly see what I have to do to bring this house back to its former glory where it deserves to be. I knew right then and there that I had a lot of work ahead of me. This was going to take some time and a lot of patience. But I knew I could do it. Because for the first time in my life, I had faith in something. And I knew that it was worth it all.

It's the things worth doing that are never easy. They challenge us to use everything we've learned in our journey through life. And it's because of that challenge that makes you a stronger person. Even if the desired outcome was not achieved. It pushes you past what you thought you could go. Places that you wouldn't have been comfortable going without the challenge to force you there and allow you to open your mind and gain a new perspective. You beat one level and move on to the next, right?
But that's not always the way it goes. You get stuck. You can't figure out how to progress. You've been moving, but you're not sure if you've been moving in the right direction because you find yourself asking what yourself what did I do wrong? What happened to who I am? And how did I lose myself so quickly? This goes on for awhile, only to be temporarily broken by something dressed a little differently. It's different so it's exciting for awhile. You lose yourself in that excitement. Hoping that this the thing that makes everything else better.
So you succumb to it. You let it form and mold you into what it wants. And you live like that. Thinking everything is all peachy keen. But as the days go by, you get this slight nagging in the back of your head. You don't really think much of it. Because everything is OK. Things are going better this time around. But, eventually the nagging gets worse and worse until the day you wake up and don't recognize the face in the mirror. What is this, who is staring back at me? Who have I become?
In that instant when you question yourself, everything becomes clear for a split second. You see what you've always wanted to be, but then it's gone. You're left with a destination but no way to get there.
So you cast aside everything and everyone in the hopes that one of the things you've cast aside is the thing that's been bringing you down. Now you're left feeling worse than before. Because before, the people around you offered a distraction from the lies you've been telling yourself. Now you have to face the fact that the way you've been acting isn't who you are.
Eventually you get tired of feeling that way, so you let some people back into your life thinking "I'm better this time around. Things will be be alright." and you're feeling whole for the first time in awhile. And that's a great feeling. But, something is missing. You're not able to rely on yourself to get you through the tough times. Because something traumatic happened and there's no one there. And you're forced to repeat the cycle trying to find a place where you fit in.

One of the toughest things in life is being able to rely on yourself to remind you of who you are and what you're working for. It's so easy to get side tracked with all of the things around us. Especially people. The people around us can easily place us on a path that we had no intention of going down until we met them. We're human! We're easily influenced. We want to be happy by nature and we get confused with all of the excitement going on around us. Oh, this is fun. I like this. Let's continue down this road until I'm forced to turn around because there's an obstacle in the way that I was in no way prepared for because I didn't think about what I was doing until I did it. It's so so easy to fall into something that makes us happy for a short time but effects us for a long time. We don't think about the things that we do until after we've done them.
Just don't ever let someone change who you are. It's not worth the hurt and struggle you go through when they change and expect you to stay the same. Keep who you are and where you want to go close to your heart, because that's all you've got. That's all YOU. No one else should be able to touch that. It's going to be your motivation throughout your day to day life. It's going to be what keeps you going when you feel like you can't go anymore. You've seen it. You had it all planned out. Once you take the time to plan something out, you know it's going to be worth doing. Because there is something in that end result that drives you to become the person you want to see when you look in the mirror.

Author's Note

Please excuse my formatting.