Follow The Yellow-Brick Road

There are no fairytales. There is no happily ever after.

There are only pieces of life. One part quilted haphazardly with another and that with another; the colors don’t match, some parts are faded, others too bright, yet others that are darkdarkdark.

There are staples instead of stitches.

It stretches behind you like a road you’ve been travelling as far as you remember. The past is a mish-mash of clashing hues, pools of light and darkness. But now that the darkness is behind you it doesn’t seem so dark. It’s been colored in with a vague indigo fondness and it makes you happy, looking down the path you’ve stapled together.

But there are no fairytales and happily ever after is just a point of time. It cannot stretch very long.

For you there is only the present.

Only the future that you can reach out and brush with your fingertips before it moves farther and farther away; fluttering, morphing, evanescent and tumultuous like a stormy sea.

The realm of happily ever after a mirage that shimmers seductively in the distance, always just out of reach.

It’s taken you a long time but now you know that happiness is elusive. It can vanish like a phantom moth cupped safely in your hands, or it can trickle away slowly like sand, grain by grain till the emptiness inside your clenched fist is a black hole of nothingness.

So you learn to be grateful for it, enjoy it while it last and staple it safely into your patchwork of a life.

You ground yourself in the present with your left foot in the past and let it wash over you in warm, frothy waves.

The future before you is still dark, with ribbons of light appearing and disappearing, flashing over murky shapes you’ll never recognize till you reach them.

It’s like you’re at the center of a labyrinth. There is the warmcoldcomfortableknown presence of the past behind out. You know you can lose your sorrows in the selective memory of the past, all the good times lurking just out of your sight behind your back, weaving narcotic tendrils around your mind, drugging you with vaulting promises of light and warmth.

The future yawns before you, dark and foggy and hopelessly twisted within itself. You don’t want to go, to leave this safe place. But your feet refuse to stay and you’re just that curious about what lies in the dark. You fancy you see another happy place in the distance, shining faintly somewhere beyond the murky halflight.

There is no drama to it. You take no deep theatrical breath. No straightening of shoulders or scrunching of brow. No setting of chin. No hardening of your eyes.

Just a vaguely guarded look as you, stranded in the miraculous moment where today turns from present to past, take your first conscious steps toward the light.

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