Goodnight M. Yang

Chapter One: This Too Shall Pass

Goodnight M. Yang

Chapter One: This Too Shall Pass

"This too shall pass" is a proverb indicating that all material conditions, positive or negative, are temporary. –Wikipedia

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I never thought the entirety of my life would come down to being divided into chapters. I mean, most people think that you can sum up the feelings, experiences, and memories of a human beings life into 400+ pages but I never did. I always thought it was a crude injustice to the life of any man, woman or child whom had died and had their life story told, front to back, page by page, in one book, chapter by chapter.

Anyone who has experienced feelings before knows that a single day of being in love can be stretched along for miles of notebook doodles and I Love You’s. Any bum on the street could go breathless with describing what it is like to spend an hour sleeping on the side of the road in the frigid New York winters. And most girls, as it has come to become a cliché of our time, can’t seem to express into words how it feels to have your heart broken.

The heartbreak, to most, is something that we must live with and grow from. It is inevitable in the world and must be passed down from mother to daughter, father to son. The people who break our hearts are usually those who have had it done onto them far too many times. After a while, in life, you have to choose whether you will be the one falling and breaking or leading and destroying.

These are the sad injustices of our times. The greatest mind in the world, summed up into 345 pages, unabridged and the youth of an entire nation battling for breaker to broken. I can’t help but dwell on these things in my life as they have both brought me to this very distinct fork in the road.

People don’t seem to realize how influential the world can be to a teenage girl. The world is a different place through those eyes. Words written down onto paper have different meanings, the sun rises and sets in a different way and the feelings we have all had are amplified and felt like nothing and no one can truly express it. Mothers were there once, as they express to their daughters so often. But you can describe a harsh cold from memory or you can shiver in the reality of its cold upon you now. From memory, the feeling is so much different than when you are living it now.

It is hard to realize that nobody understands what you are going through. It is even harder to admit to yourself that nobody cares. I had always thought someone would be there, holding my hand, shouting my name, begging for me to come back to the real world and that soon these thoughts and feelings would all go away. I had read about those mothers, those friends, those loves who had done this for their heroines. I had always wanted that. But it was something I simply did not come equipped with.

I needed to be told “This too shall pass.” With these emotions, thoughts and feelings taking over an already innocent, ignorant mind with no one and nothing to prepare me for them, I was a loose cannon, a bomb waiting to explode, a hurricane wind… a volcano.

Because of this, I found myself standing at a bridge. This time it was not a metaphorical bridge. I was standing at the bridge between this county and the next with my feet at the cold, red metal while the rain hit against my exposed cheek, gray sweater and blue jeans.

It was so cold. It was so cold that the sweater which had come soaked previously was almost icing around me now. The rain was more like ice hitting at my face as my long, dark hair, drenched, stuck along the sides of my face and what was left exposed at my neck.

I turned again to look at the black road behind me. In all these years, this had been my only friend. That dark, empty road leading nowhere had been the only consistent thing in my life. It was the only foundation I had rested on. It left plenty of room for those who cared to stop me.