The Mountain

Here you are standing in front of a mountain forest. It's 9 o'clock at night with the moon as your only source of light.

You are trying to be ready for the walk of your life. You feel nervous and that dark voice inside you is already saying you won't be able to make. But there is this little voice, a piece of you that is urging you to do this. You see, life has been hard, you have been through so much, and because of that, you have lost yourself. You don't think that you can do much of anything anymore, but you want to, and walking to the top of this mountain will be the start of a new beginning, all you have to do is reach the top. "Can I accomplish this?" you ask yourself. You sigh as you close your eyes for a moment, breathe in, breathe out. You open your eyes again and let the journey upward begin.

One hour into your walk~

It starts to rain. "Just my fucking luck," You mutter to yourself.

You hear the dark voice in your head laugh out ,"It's not too late to turn back you know. Right now we could be at home, lying warm in bed." The dark voice is right, that's what you could be doing right now, but that's all you have been doing.

You hear the little voice inside your head say hesitantly, "How can you be upset, you love the rain remember?" She was right, you did love the rain once. Every time it rained you would go outside, raise your arms, and say that you were taking a shower with nature. 'But that was a long time ago and the feeling of love for anything like that left me long ago,' you think to yourself.

You hear the little voice respond softly, "I know, but you can fall in love with it all over again. It won't be hard, you're on this mountain for a reason."

You hear the dark voice snap out "Oh shut up, will you? She is not on this mountain for a reason and how on earth can she fall in love with something as stupid as rain when her soul is dead as a corpse?" The dark voice's words make you come to a complete stop.

"I am dead inside, that is true," you whisper out loud as you close your eyes, "but I don't want to be anymore. I am here for a reason, even though I can't see it now." You don't hear anything else from the voices, so you continue walking.

Two hours into your walk~

The rain has stopped pouring and you see a hummingbird. 'That's odd,' you think to yourself. It's standing on a rock drinking some water that was left by the rain. You want to get closer, but you are afraid of scaring it away. You decided to sit across from it, your back against a thin tree, trying to make sure that you don't startle it. You know you shouldn't be stopping, but for some reason, you can't help it.

"How beautiful you are," you say in a soft voice. You have not observed the pure beauty of life in a long time and forgotten how fascinating it truly is. As the bird stands on the rock drinking its life away, you can't help but think back. Back to when you used to believe that life was just a gorgeous piece of artwork filled with different colors and great stories. 'How sad that I have lost that feeling. When did I lose it?' you think to yourself. The dark voice answers haughtily, "You lost that idea of life when you stopped wanting to live.You became weak. No, less than weak. Fragile would be more like it," but that's ok because that's when you I first met!"

'It's right,' you think mournfully. You have wanted to end it all so many times that you were drowning constantly through it. Every day you would tear out pieces of yourself, your dear defenseless body had taken the brunt of your anguish, but you just didn't care, you wanted those pieces gone. At night, when you were all alone and close to the realm of sleep, you would deeply wish for your soul to disappear until you could just be forgotten and left alone. For you, that was what peace meant. You knew that it wasn't healthy, but what could you do? You tried and tried to get rid of those feelings, but bad things kept coming and that feeling was a snake, always slithering back to you whenever it could, there was no escape; to be free of it was just a dream. Until one day you had enough... you no longer wanted to deal with that snake so you grab your shovel, buried it as deep as you could and left it there to rot. You felt for a long time it was the best way to go, the bad things in life could no longer affect you and you could temporarily put down your sword and withdrawal from your own self-war. From then on you were neutral, numb to your very core.