Moving Forwards

Introduction

Slam. The sound of the door shutting reverberates around my skull. It has an eerie sense of finality to it. Well, I suppose that's fitting at least. The lamppost across from me stands where it usually does but its steady yellow glow, usually warming, seems muted. All my senses feel muted, like I'm seeing this familiar street from underwater. It's both numbing and in a way, making me feel sharper. It's as though I can finally see just how fragile everything is beneath the coating of sugar. I see the cracks in the stained pavement, weeds pushing through them, the rust spreading like a fungus over the lamppost, the algae turning the mirrored surface of the water green. I used to see these as minor flaws in a complex machine, unimportant in the great scheme of things. Now, I realise modern society is a plague and this planet is doing all it can to cure itself of it.

I turn right and set off in a trance. This is my home, yet it feels so far from it. I've always been an outsider, yet I've only just now realised it. My feet carry me onwards until I'm outside a restaurant, the restaurant, our restaurant. I stare inside; it's empty except for one couple towards the back. Young love...never lasts, I learnt that one the hard way. Just look at them. I pity them. It'll only take a couple of months maximum, one will slowly drift away with the other still scrabbling to keep a hold on what could have been, struggling  to stay afloat. Or maybe it'll come quickly; an argument never resolved, some personal drama blown out of proportion. It'll end and it won't be pretty. Or clean. It never is.

It's so stupid though. Everything has to end, that's the way life works. Yet still we cling on to anything and everything we can. Sentimentality blocks out reason, cluttering both our minds and our rooms with worthless junk. Sometimes you need to step back from it all. Sometimes you need to just let go.

I step to the side to let a girl past. Head down, on her phone, she doesn't register my presence one bit. She is as dead to the world as the world is to me. To call them 'social networks' is a total misnomer. They serve two purposes; they let us craft the image of ourselves we want people to see and they give us a place to be shallow. So, so shallow and so, so fake. I can't believe I bought into that crap. I became all that I never wanted to be, I began to care about how I looked. I was influenced without even knowing it. I've started being mean to people, putting others down to make myself seem/feel bigger. Not just on the internet which drips in a false sense of anonymity, but slowly seeping into real life as well. It makes me feel sick. It all does.

Pointless. It's all pointless.

I've reached my car now, I unlock it and sit down in the driver's seat, but I don't start the ignition. I don't know where I'm going; I don't have anywhere to go. But that doesn't matter right now. All that matters is that I get away from all this. The silence is deadening. You don't really realise how much noise surrounds you constantly until it's gone. I suppose that's true to everything; you only appreciate it being there when it's gone. Until it's all gone.

Turning onto the main road, I join the back of the queue of cars that seemingly goes on for miles. All those people...all those people who I will never interact with at all, simply filling the role of an extra in their lives just as they do in mine. So many people, I never realised it but now I do it seems suffocating. I look to the left and see a family; mother, father and two little girls. The centres of their own little universes, all of them, yet they'll share many of the same experiences. Then the girls will leave, growing up in different directions with different careers. Maybe, they will stay in touch, looking after their dying parents, holding close all the distant childhood memories. Yet again, maybe they won't. Someone will move away, cutting all ties, going off on their own little adventure, not realising the turmoil they've left behind. Isn't retrospect great?

That's what I'm doing; leaving. I'm leaving everything behind, the memories, both bad and good, the reminder of times past, the people. I'm leaving, and I'm leaving for good.