People say that within a picture there’s a thousand words. Although for me behind each thought there’s a thousand questions. At the young age of 15 I felt as if I had already faced many of life’s difficult challenges although I only know it was just a few obstacles. I had realized that life was too short to wait around for answers and too short to regret the past.
At the age of 15 I spent many of hours searching for my escape, something to set me free. Yet I had realized that escaping reality was like living a life with no meaning. A friend had once told me that time heals all wounds but leaves some pretty big scars. I wondered if the scars where left to remind us of our past and prevent us from getting hurt in the future or to haunt us of are imperfections and flaws.
At this point in my life I felt as if I were a ticking bomb waiting on my fuse to explode. I had been in a head on collision with the world. Or so I had thought. Life seemed to be a constant struggle to find a way to cope with the years trend of loosing old friends. I started reading, hiking and writing more then ever. One night in July of summer going into 9th grade my best friend and I at the time went up to my favorite lookout on the bluff called Jesus. For the first time in a while I had realized the true meaning of having beauty in existence. With beauty in view nothing else in the world mattered to me. What ever troubled me vanished with one glance of the setting sun and all my worries and fears were suddenly no longer in existence. I remember laying on my back looking at the world upside down in which sometimes it seemed to really appear that way to me. I saw a flock of birds flying overhead in a perfect line. I lay there wishing I could be as put together and as organized as them.
Often I viewed myself as an illusion. Almost as if I could look in the mirror and see right past myself. I felt like a stranger living in my own body. My thoughts were consuming me by the minute and everything I had once liked or loved to do had been buried beneath my feet. My room became my cave and my music became my best friend. Every emotion pulsing through my veins was put into the percussion of music.
Through my eyes music was a sedative. My headphones were my barrier setting the real world and I apart. We had become enemies and very unfamiliar with one anothers unusual changes. I loved being able to relate to the lyrics although I did not live through them. I do have to say though that the time I felt most distant in my life it was nice to know somewhere someone felt the same. My struggle was not one of a kind although some days it did feel like I was on my own, an alien of my own home.
Aside of not knowing who I was some days I’ve also learned a lot about myself through this experience. I have become very intellectual with my spiritual side, gained many of personal morals and beliefs that will stick with me for a life time and have become quite certain that my purpose in life is to help others. As crazy as it might sound I think I was blessed with this challenge in my life. Without this experience I would not be who I am today.
Until this time in my life I had never saw myself as a strong believer of a higher power until the day I felt as if I was stopped dead in my tracks by the power itself. I was walking back home from where I had been reading the book Impulse on a bench near the point on granddad’s bluff. Impulse is a New York Times bestseller written by Ellen Hopkins about troubled teens who have attempted the same ultimate act- suicide. It had ended abruptly with everyone finding who they were until one of the boys took one step further and plunged himself off a cliff. My blood was boiling. I felt like the book had built me up to break me down. As I felt the rest of the world had done as well. Although it was only my active imagination of all the world vs. me. Choking back tears I began to walk home in disappointment for I thought the book was about new beginnings and happy endings, which I longed for. Not long down the path from where I had been perched reading my book, I spotted a fox. So pretty, yet so dangerous. We stared one another in the eye which seemed to be forever. Although I’m sure it was only a few seconds. I felt like he could see my pain. For that moment in the seriousness of the situation I had been placed in I had been presented with courage. Almost as if he was telling me to face my troubles head on and have courage to continue to move forward. We both looked away and continued on our separate ways down the path. I’m pleased to say that never once had I considered the ultimate act as an escape route of my own.
One morning I had decided to save myself from this never ending title wave that seemed to be battering me to the bottom of the ocean floor. I opened the door and walked out to feel a breeze of chilly air and hear the pure morning sounds of chirping birds. As I stood outside I felt the world spinning with only my person standing still as if it had all been a dream. Numbness filled my body from head to toe and all my emotions felt as if they where being blown free with the wind. My escape had been the will power within myself to let go of the past and enter the future of new friends and new beginnings.
To this day if someone asked me to define my life I still don’t think I would be able to. The thought of life to me is so complex yet there really is no true definition. To me a vine perfectly resembles the idea of life and death. Without progression vines cannot continue to grow. Just as a flower without light or water wilts away. If you don't take steps in moving forward the cycle of life becomes meaningless and things die off. Just as I would’ve without the help of a rude awakening of self actualization.
-Alexis
