decisions dont come easily

She went walking along the dirt path she knew as a child. Almost 20 years had come between her and this place. The scene was very familiar, she had been down this way many times during her younger days; winding through the wooded area just beyond the other side of the gravel road near her childhood home, along the runoff bed cut by rain water when storms overflowed the nearby creek.

An equally destructive wave of memories and emotions cut through her as easily as the water from the creek cut through the fine sand that was soft beneath her feet. Every step, every breath, drove her deeper into her own mind. This is what she needed...time. Time to look at the world she created for herself and find the absolution she was searching for.

As she walked into the woods, carrying a basket with her lunch, she watched the little sparrows as they flitted about, gathering what they needed to build their spring nests. A rebirth was coming to the overgrown landscape. All of the old, dead remnants of the cold and nearly lifeless winter were about to be swept away by the beauty and majestic blossoms of the new year. She understood the sense of urgency the little birds felt, her own awakening created the same feelings inside of her, ready to move on, yet afraid of what was to come. Wanting the decisions she had come here to work out in her heart and mind to be the right ones this time instead of sending her back through the same cycle of unhappiness. She deserved to be happy, she desired it more than anything. She would find her happiness, she just knew it would come to her.

Her wandering mind returned when she saw the remnants of a beautiful, tall oak tree she had forgotten she knew. It had always been sturdy, strong and unfaultering, but now, she found it broken and crumbling. Split in half by some force of nature she was not to know. She looked closely at the tattered marrow of the trunk and ran her fingers along the thick bark. "How fitting", she thought as she realized she also was split in two, trying to recover the tattered pieces of her own marrow, as it were. Her thick skin the only thing holding the two halves of her life together; without it, her whole world would just fall away and eventually be nothing more than barely identifiable, decaying matter left alone in the middle of nowhere. A tear appeared at the corner of her eye and made its way down her cheek and onto the once beautiful tree. The loneliness was unbearable. She had to get away from this place, further into the woods she went.

As every other moment that passed for her, a dear friend entered her thoughts. He was always there with her, much of her recent confusion stemmed from their friendship. He made her see that she was more than what she had become. His simple existence in her world had transformed her into a better person. She often wondered if she had made the same difference in his life. Did he think of her as fondly and as often as she did of him? Were his feelings towards her similar to hers for him, or was he simply tolerant of her neediness and kind hearted enough to be whatever she needed any time she needed him? Did he even realize what he truly meant to her?

She knew that there could never be a "them" but that didn't matter, she still desired nothing more but to feel the profound bond between them continue to grow in intensity, to be able to freely put her arms around him and hold him close enough to feel his warmth permeate her inner being. The connection between them was blatantly obvious. They spoke, often, of the happiness they could share. Her heart ached for him, ached to be everything he ever wanted in a life mate.

That's why it was so difficult being attached to someone else, someone with very little concern or concept of anyone else's happiness but their own. They could fake love for a few days but once the reality of life came back into their minds everything seemed to fall apart; arguments, hateful comments, angry actions, it was all she knew of the life she created with her husband. She knew it was not a place for her to stay. She tried so often to force love with him, under the ruse of 'it's the right thing to do', that's why she decided to take an afternoon to herself in this quiet place. She felt certain her actions on this day would surface the clarity that had been alluding her for so long.

Lately, she felt a sense of disconnection from her friend. Not knowing the cause of it made her crazy. She feared it was because she had done or said something wrong. That she had expressed herself too readily or made herself too attainable. Had he made the decision to stay aloof and maintain a cavernous distance in order to save himself the trouble of a heartstruck mistress? Running over every word she had ever spoken to him, over and over again until she found herself dizzy from the analysis of thought. The only thing that kept creeping into her mind was each time she made heartbreaking decision to back away and give him the space she knew he needed to focus on other aspects of his life, he would tell her no, that he didn't want her to back away. That he wanted their relationship to stay on the same course as it had been for so long. Although he never defined exactly where she fit, the longer she stayed where she was in his life, she knew she would continue falling more in love with him every single day of her life, leading her deeper to never ending loneliness. She smiled a half crooked smile when she realized that it was something she was willing to do for him because no one else had ever brought anything meaningful out of her, it was new and breath taking and wonderful; she had come well too far to ever let the fear of loneliness keep her away from that which her heart desired more than any other thing.

With each step, she found herself surrounded by increasingly dense underbrush; equally deep and dense were the thoughts surrounding the choices she had come here to make, they whirled around her like the fallen leaves, dancing in the breeze of the still winter stricken wooded area. She remembered why she loved this quiet place so much. Nothing could bother her here. She could be silent and one with everything around her in this beautiful place.

She knew from the beginning what she had intended to do once she reached that special place she remembered so vividly. She had planned it delicately. She knew no one else could find her, to interrupt the inevitable. She had been deceptive earlier, when she told those around her where she was going. She said she was going to go and spend time with a friend. That she would be back soon. How were they to ever know that her friend was herself and she had no intention on coming back.

In the distance, the brush cleared, revealing a broad, flat clearing in the huddled mass of trees. When she reached the small, sunkissed valley, thoughts of all the moments she spent here as a teenager came flooding and washing over her, releasing tension she had carried with her as long as she could remember. Her legs failed under the weight of those emotions and she fell to her knees, hard. The parcel she had been carrying fell and it's contents spilled out onto the ground. There she stayed for what seemed an eternity - wailing with her soul in a place where no human ears could hear her, crying out to any force that could help her make sense of all the shit she had come to know as life.

After awhile she began to relax. Months and years of feelings just seemed to fade away. She felt better. She didn't care for crying, but this time was different. She wiped her face with a napkin from the parcel and gathered the rest of its contents. Sitting back from her knees she looked around and smiled. Everything was going to go just as she planned.

Inside her parcel she had packed a journal and pen, a snack for lunch, a bottle of water and a long, thin twisted piece of metal rod that she had retrieved from her mother's property several years before. She was always good with creating something from nothing and she had been playing with this metal long enough to have fashioned a suitably decent dagger; it had an elongated, sharpened tip like that of a pencil and the base was curled up and attached to a leather bound handle with an ornate red jewel secured by the leather straps. She was very proud of her creation, especially now that she knew it had an important purpose.

She sat in silence for nearly an hour, meditating in the crisp air. She sunk into her consciousness deeper than she had ever gone before. Seeing patterns and swirling colors, picturing people and places that were both a part of her life and parts of her that she had never seen. She loved meditating, finding the peaceful place inside herself. Finding that peace mentally while she sat in her peaceful place physically made the experience even more extraordinary. Without opening her eyes, she reached up to the sky, her fingertips stretched as far as they would go, pulling every muscle in her arms and down her back vertically for a very long moment. She took in a deep breath through her nose and exhaled, loudly, through her mouth, releasing every ounce of negative energy. She brought her arms down and stretched them out to her sides, palms out and rocked side to side for a few moments, feeling each muscle tense and release with every twitch they made. She placed her hands on her head and ran her fingers through her silky, soft, black hair several times. She tilted her head back and took a quick, deep breath then reached over for an apple she had in her bag. As she bit through the crunchy skin and crisp, sweet flesh, she relaxed back on her free hand to admire the beautiful trees and wildlife around her, soaking up every gloriously wonderful sensation as it came to her. This is exactly what she needed.

She laid down amongst the multicolored leaves, her head resting comfortably in her hand as she finished her apple. She threw the core towards the trees just opposite of where she laid. Giggling because she didn't realize she had such a weak throw and it didn't make it very far. The bugs and birds would be grateful for such a sweet treat this late in the season. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the sounds around her. Listening as well as she could to everything she could hear.

She took out her journal and jotted down her thoughts in detail. Describing her experience using vivid visualizations to impress everything as best as she could. She didn't want anything to be misconstrued; she wanted everyone to know exactly where her mind was in the moments before her experiment was carried out.

Again, she reached into her bag. She pulled out the dagger and examined it carefully. It was deep matte black with silver edges and tip that were so bright they were almost white. The mottled surface showed the wear from when she was flattening and sharpening the edges. A million different colors were flecked amongst the silver from the different minerals and other alloys in the crappy metal. It wasn't worth much, but she had made it herself.

She sat up on her knees, perched up on her feet, she reached out with both hands and pointed the blade toward the center of the clearing and held it there until her arms got weak. She used only her hands to turn the blade's tip towards her. She closed her eyes and said a short prayer, begging her spirit to show her the things she needed to know, and as she finished her prayer, she jerked her arms towards her as hard and quickly as she could, her blade hitting it's mark precisely where she had envisioned.

As she plunged the sharp instrument deep into her torso, she was overwhelmed by both the physical pain of the frigid metal breaking through her flesh and the emotional pain of the overflowing anger, bitterness, frustration and hatred trying to force it's way out of her from the seemingly tiny wound. She pulled it out and let it drop to the ground with a resounding thud as the blood from her body began to freely flow from her.

She rocked back then stood up gracefully in the sunlight that was beautifully beaming through the trees. Her mind waned as the physical pain faded and the emotional torment released itself down her front and onto the ground around her. It didn't take long before she was unable to stand and she carefully rested herself bac down on the ground.

She laid silently still as what was left of her existence flowed from her. This is the moment she had been waiting for. The decision was about to be made for her...what would she see flash before her as death took her from this life to the next? What was the most influential moment in her life? Who was the one she loved the MOST through her living years? Her mind became crystal clear as her eyes closed and she let the moment take her away from everything around her. The birds no longer twittered about, no wind, only calm, quiet.

Moments passed in this peaceful bliss, until she became aware that a familiar voice was faintly calling her name in the distance. She opened her eyes and squinted into the direction of the voice and the sudden brightness of the sunlight blinded her, all she could see was white. No purer white had ever been seen, by her eyes or any other. Again, she heard her name, stronger, closer, more desperate than it was before. She slowly rolled and closed her eyes, exhaustion like she had never felt was taking over every part of her. She heard a rustling in the leaves and her mind awakened enough to try and move her body towards the sound. As she struggled to roll over, she realized then that she had no feeling left, it had all left her. Stranded again by her own ridiculous actions, fear gripped what was left of her conscienceness and she cried out to him, her lover. Her voice was surprisingly quiet and weak, she quickly called to him again as she didn't think he was able to hear her. She closed her eyes, the fear of death left her when she felt her lover reach her side. He had heard her. He was her life, flashing before her dying eyes. He was everything she had ever wanted, and she knew now what it was that she had to do.

As she gently reached her hand out to touch his face, her fingers met no resistance. Her mind had created such a perfect image of her love that even she had been fooled. What did that mean, she wondered as she looked into the seemingly perfect deep brown eyes she had seen so many times in person, she gazed lovingly at his likeness as she saw him smile down at her. He mouthed words she was unable to understand as she felt her body being lifted gently into his arms. He held her tight and she felt a crisp breeze as he bent down to kiss her lovingly on the mouth. How could she feel him holding her but not touch him? Was he really there? Did he read through everything she had told him earlier and figured out where she was going and what she was doing? Was he and all the sensations nothing more than an illusion created by her dying mind to smooth transition from one life to the next? It didn't matter. She was lying in her perfect place, in her lovers arms. The only place she ever wanted to be. She inhaled as deeply as she could and let the air within her be released out into the sunlight, her eyes closed. She was home.