Divergence

Awake

Life ends with thunderous crash and the splinter of glass moving sideways...

And then life begins with the rush of the 'L' train passing by, and the screech against the train tracks jolts you back into the present reality.

Sort of.  You're still disoriented...how did you get here?  You feel like things should be different.  The sound of glass echoes through your ears.  Your body remains still, but your insides feel twisted, heaving forward, twirling inside out.  Your heart tightens with unknown vacillation, a mysterious affliction.   You search inside yourself, desperate for answers...and then, there is quietness.  The feelings dissipate before you have further chance to make sense of them.  It's like you've awakened from a dream - the image fades once the sun shines in.

The icy wind whips against your body, and the air is thick with frigidness.  It's a cold night tonight...and that gray sweater jack you're wearing does nothing for you.  In your own way, you sense that this feeling is akin the ones you forgot a moment before.  Just as this jacket does nothing to protect you from the elements, there is nothing to protect you from this vulnerability.  You are here, all alone, in a place that is familiar and unfamiliar.  You know not why you are here or how you got here.

And even if you did, there is no guarantee you'd accept responsibility.

Your eyes drink in your surroundings.  This...is the train station, obviously.  The blue sign reads "Madison and Wabash"...just as silver train with orange signs whizzes by.  How fitting that there is a foggy haze across the sky - it clouds the buildings in the distance, just as the fog of confusion clouds the clarity of your mind.  Random cars and buses drive by, off to varied destinations.  The others are spread out across two platforms, with some using the high platform to get from one side of the stations to the other.  Some are chatting with friends, others are on the phone, and others still simply stare out into another in particular.

Somehow, you're sitting at a bench all by yourself.  Everyone else here seems to know where they are going.  They arrive, fill into trains, and then, they speed away.

You don't know where you're going.  You don't even know how you got here, exactly.

It's dark...so, so dark.  The streetlights may be bright enough to conceal the starry skies above, and the stations may be well-lit enough to keep people from going bump in the night (or even worse, trip over to the infamous third rail), but there is darkness within - no illumination.  You don't know where you're going.  You can't remember where you've been.  The present seems meaningless.

You wish you could think properly.  You wish you could make sense of it all. 

You ask yourself over and over again, "What am I doing here?" 

Each time you ask, you hope for the answer.

But you'll never get it, no matter how many times you ask.

You find yourself overwhelmed, distressed and frustrated.  You just want to cry because nothing seems to make any sense.  You want desperately to understand why it is you are here and why your heart feels like it's going to burst and why you feel like everything has been burned inside out.  You want to understand why its feel like you've awakened from a dream only to come into what feels like Armageddon, the end of the universe.

Why?  That's the question...Your lips form into the word, "Why...?"

The dam feels like it will burst...but that's when you notice how cold your face is.  Your fingers brush against the tears frozen along the curves of your cheeks and your neck.  You...you were crying before!  But you can't remember what you were crying about.  The fog refuses to lift.