aurorabrookewrites-blog - Tumblr blog

[aurorabrookewrites-blog]

[aurorabrookewrites-blog]

The Fence

It's hard to know who I am without knowing who I used to be. It feels impossible to build a future when the past is a mystery.

So I take a walk down memory lane, just to look around. The streetlights aren't on and the houses are all dark; there is nothing to be found.

I can't find my home no matter how hard I look. How do I find something that even I cannot describe?

I would ask an old friend but they wouldn't know. How can they show me a place where I never let them go?

I try to remember and my head starts to hurt. It seems everyone can go home but mine is just a blur.

Sometimes when I sleep, I get a picture of the past. I can see the shattered windows, I can feel the broken glass.

I want to walk inside but something keeps pulling me away. It seems as though I built a fence and forgot to add a gate.

I try to pull the boards apart but I'm just not strong enough. There must be a secret, a way to open it up.

Perhaps when I built it, I thought it's better this way. It's strong enough to hold the memories and tall enough to keep others away.

Forgetting could have been part of the plan or maybe just dumb luck. It's been said you should never take down a fence, until you know why it was put up.

[aurorabrookewrites-blog]

Fire

It seems that most people have a fire burning inside of them.  A true desire to live and experience life that radiates from within. They have a drive, a belief, almost a panic that there isn’t enough time in life to do everything they want to do. Where did that fire come from? Is everyone supposed to have it?

I can’t find my fire. I don’t know when it burned out. Did I ever have it?  Did someone stomp it out?  Did I give it away, ember by ember with those I have lost a long the way? Did every life experience slowly smother it?

When I try to look inside and feel it, all I can feel is a space that is cold and dark. A space where all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room. I can’t breathe, and I can’t get warm.  I look around at others and I can see them living in the warmth and the fire shows in their eyes.  I try to get closer to them and try to feel what they are feeling but as I do, I can feel the air getting thin and see their fire start to weaken. Their space starts to feel colder and I can see them shiver. They don’t know why their fire is struggling, but I do, so I turn and walk away.

I go back to the bleak and cold space and desperately try to find a spark. Just a spark. That’s all I need to light my own fire. Then it happens, I find that moment of hope and a spark appears. I know how to turn it into a fire, I’ve read the books and talked to the experts. I know it needs shelter from the cold and the rain. It needs dry kindling to grow and it needs oxygen. I have worked so hard to gather everything I need, and I’m exhausted. I try to think positive, to imagine myself sitting by my own fire. I know I can do this, and everyone has told me I can do it if I just try hard enough.

I try to gently blow on the spark to give it fuel to grow. But I am tired. My body is tired.  My breath becomes shallow and the air is leaving the room. The storm in my head starts to rage and tries to drown the spark. I try to cover the spark from the storm, I try to keep blowing, to nurture it. The spark dies. Still no fire.

They say that keeping a fire alive is much easier than starting one. Starting a fire is the hardest part. So how did I let it get here? I must believe that I started life with my own fire. How did I let it go out? Didn’t I notice it getting colder? Couldn’t I see the flicker of light starting to vanish?

Was it even my job to keep watch? Was I too young to know? Should someone else have helped me? Should they have noticed? Couldn’t they see that I was sitting in the dark? Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe their fire was burning out. Perhaps, they couldn’t tend to my fire because they didn’t have any warmth to give. No air. No sparks. Maybe life and death had killed their spirit. Perhaps they were choking, struggling for air, and their tears kept drowning their efforts. Maybe, they felt just like me. Maybe I knew that. Maybe that’s why I didn’t ask for help. I knew it wasn’t there.  

I can’t remember the last time I felt the fire, the appetite for life.  I don’t know if I ever really felt it so how can I miss it? How can I miss something that I never knew? I know there are many others fighting the same fight. You can tell by looking into their eyes. Some people have such life in their eyes. You can feel it and sometimes it is hard to look at. Then there are others that I can see fight battles like mine. There is a dullness in their eyes. Their face may be smiling but there is no fire in their eyes. If you watch closely, you can see someone’s fire burn out. Sometimes it happens slowly, over the years. Sometimes it happens in an instant. When something so traumatic happens that it wipes out every ember in their soul.  They become the living dead.

So how long do I have to keep trying?  How long do I need to slowly suffocate when there is no air around me?  How can I justify my own existence when I smother the fires of those around me by making their space colder and harder to breathe? If I could go back in time, I would have stopped fighting a long time ago, before I had people who counted on me to stay warm. Why would someone bring life into this world when they are so dead inside? Why is that allowed to happen?

They should have gotten a chance at a better life, a warmer life. They weren’t given the choice; they were born into a home that lacks the fire. Where the person who is supposed to watch over them, instead, sucks the air out of the room and lives in their own mental hurricane. If given the opportunity with someone new, could they still have a chance? I may not be able to show them how to build a fire, a passion for living, but I am willing to set myself on fire to keep them warm.  Is that how I could make it right?  Maybe, maybe not.