2 of 5

The world around me feels so cold, so desolate, so bleak. I watch my feet as they carry me through the quiet streets of this city I don’t remember the name of. I don’t remember any names but I know I knew many at one time. I try to understand how I came to lose all of who I am, all of what once made me me but thinking seems to be too much for me.

A sudden high pitch squealing comes from a distance to the right of me and I stop walking to turn towards the sound. I’m not the only one. There are about 20 others who turn in tandem with me. As they begin to walk towards the sound, I remain in place. My body wants to follow the others, to satiate some unknown need, but an even stronger need keeps me rooted in place as I try to reason out these two divergent desires.

There seems to be no discernable reason for either pull within me, no purpose I can deduce. There is just the sense of inevitability driving me to move forward. When my body seems to be unwilling to remain still any longer, I return to my original path for no reason other than that it seems to be the right thing to do. Is there a such thing as right and wrong for me anymore? I’m pretty sure that there was at one point but I can’t remember when that time would have been.

As I continue on my way, the buildings around me get smaller and smaller until I’m walking along much narrower streets lined with what my mind tells me are houses. Where my mind gets this odd tidbit of information from I’m unsure. I don’t understand what the difference between these buildings and the large ones from earlier are but again, I know that I knew at one time.

It hurts knowing I’ve lost my self so completely. It’s not a physical pain however. I know that at one point I could feel physical pain but no longer. In a state of being where physical pain does not exist, what other pain can there be? In fact, if I can’t feel physical pain, how do I know I truly exist? I used to exist, that I’m sure of. Yet, if I feel this inexplicable pain, if I feel this insatiable pull, if I am surrounded with this sense of inevitability, I certainly exist, right?

My mind is a brewing storm with no land in sight. I feel nothing but confusion and pain and a sense of loss. I’m beginning to wish I didn’t exist. How I am now is so wrong, so broken. I have no hope of ever being anything more than I am in this moment. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to continue forward but, unconscious of my inner turmoil, my feet continue to move, slowly lurching farther and farther from where I awoke.

In the distance the sun begins to set. The face of the mountain range grows dark as the sky behind glows orange, merging with pink and eventually purple bleeding into the black of night. On one level I process this information yet I know I would have thought more of it at some point. It’s just one more reminder that I’m not me anymore. I’m not right. I’m not whole.

I want to stop moving. I want to collapse right here, right now. I want to give up even if I don’t know what it is that I’m giving up. I can’t though. My feet won’t stop plodding forward. They move without my permission, without my will involved at all. It’s as if I’m a machine that was left on, unattended. I no longer have a purpose but I continue on anyway. I continue on even if it is completely pointless as I’m sure my existence is. There’s too much of me missing to be worth anything at all.