Memories are made of this.

So here I Am, sat getting ready to head out. My music playing on my laptop, and suddenly it feels like goodbye. It feels like I really should learn to move on. I it feels that perhaps, just perhaps, that the final test has been passed, or failed…. or something.

It’s been one of those strange days, and it’s not even 1pm. The kind that just roll into all the others, becomming memory almost as soon as you’ve lived them. I’m very aware of how much the present is fleeting, and how much the past is only a simple memory. I almost put the word “fond” in there, but it doesn’t, somehow, fit. It would be like shoe-horning a word into a sentance where it doesn’t truly belong.

Much like the loose ends in my life.

They are there, simply flapping into the time-stream, not really going anywhere, just… being. Causing drag, slowing my life down, though the rest of the world is flying past. Anchors. Anchors that keep me looking back, terrified that if I turn around, if I look forward, there’ll be nothing there but a very solid brick wall. Something that I will fly almost head-long into, without really much time to contemplate my sticky end. It’s always difficult to think that a quick sticky end is much preferable to a long-drawn out one. One where you stare at the brick wall, and know, with numbing inevitability that your going to hit it, that try as you might, you cannot move, your hold on the anchors of the past keep you heading straight on course, keep you heading for the inevitable destruction. Just like you’ve done before. Just like you’ve done a million times before. Just like you’ve seen comming from the very begning. Trapped by your own fear, your own self-loathing, your own hate.

You watch the light. You can see it shining. It’s just out of reach. If only you could loose your hands and stretch out, perhaps, just for an instant, your fingertips would brush the light. There may still be a wall, but there would be that one, shining, perfect, incredible, indescribable moment. One that would stay with you, one that would be your strength. And maybe, just maybe, it would take the fear away. It would chase the darkness until it was nothing more than a memory, until even that memory faded into the dusty rooms of your mind.

You would have to jump. You would have to launch yourself for the light. A leap. A leap of one, perfect, and true, faith. But the distance. The all-consuming darkness between you and the light. The distance that is oblivion. Nothing. No sensation, just being. Always, on and on and on, just as you are. The Wall is an End, the Light is a Future, but the Oblivion, the complete and utter darkness is full of terrors too big to contemplate. They are full of thing thing you fear the most. The thing you fear more than even you could admit to yourself. It’s full of aboslutly nothing but you. Just You.

You wait for a sign. You don’t look forward at the wall. You look backwards to the things behind, the things that have been. You see the good times, and try not to look at the bad times, but it’s only the bad times that you keep thinking about. It’s only them that your traitorus mind keeps brining you back to. Time. And Time. Again. You look at your anchors. The things dotted around. The things that Anchor you to the past. Then you look at the light. You hunch, your body stiffens. You have but one choice. You stand on the edge, you look. The light is there, almost dim, almost out of reach, almost too far away for you to get.

Almost.

If you don’t jump now, it’s the wall. If you miss, it’s the Oblivion. If you succeed, it’s the light.

Then you realise, as your legs work almost as though they are controlled from a distance, that even if you land in oblivion, you can always climb out and try again.

You leap. You Reach. Fingertips outstretched….

~ Black Xanthus