I stopped to catch my breath. I looked up and there I was, at the top of the most beautiful mountain I’d ever seen. I don’t think I’d ever been to the mountains in fact. I couldn’t be sure, because I wasn’t sure of anything. I suddenly couldn’t remember any of it. Where was I? I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. What was my name? I couldn’t…stop…thinking…but I needed to stop. I needed to stop it somehow. There were blank thoughts and words and quotations, and somehow there I was in the midst of a sentence that had no meaning. I felt them coming again, or for the first time, I couldn’t be sure. The tears came hard, fast, strong, and I realized that it wasn’t raining anymore. I was crying, but the rain was not falling from the clouds. I collapsed to the ground at the base of the peak of this mountain. The valley beneath me, the sky above me and my body stationary in the fetal position. There I was. I could see myself from above. Disassociated, scattered, broken, confused and scared. I cried hard tears and waited for the pain to stop. But it just kept coming and coming and it was relentless.
Who am I?
I don’t know.
Where am I?
A mountain top.
Where am I going?
Nowhere.
Nowhere.
Nowhere.
Then I saw it. It was a big black sign with white letters. “Nowhere” it read, and it had an arrow pointing to the right. Slowly I stood up drenched in tears, dirt and sweat and followed that forsaken sign. My heart had fallen out of my chest somewhere along the path but I couldn’t be sure where. I walked blindly toward the sign. It was my destiny. I was headed to Nowhere and there I would find the answers. There my truth would be revealed, because I had forgotten it all and it had forgotten me, whoever “it” was.
I knew that it wasn’t fair. Any of it. I didn’t know what “it” was. But I knew that there was injustice in these fucking tears. I looked down at my knees. They were scraped and bruised, red and worn from fighting. Raw from climbing on this mountain. I made it to the peak and now I had a choice. Did I lay down and die? Or, did I continue toward Nowhere. I walked onward. I wasn’t ready to die. Not yet. Not ever.
