What makes us human?

Is it that we are concerned about the future?

Is it that the past frequently haunts us?

What drives us? What makes us do the things we do?

I do not want to live like this, regrets and memories…worries and pain…. I want peace. I want to live like a dog. It lives in the present, happy just to be alive, to just spend time with the ones it loves. I want to live like this. Free of my past, my future. Free…

I have not had an easy life. Far from it. Does this entitle me? Does life owe me because of the injustices I have been dealt?

I do not know.

Nature has been my family…Loving me in its own way, Strengthening me slowly…I have learned to live..no, it has taught me to live. I have learned to grow, watching nature in its glory. I have watched it storm and rage. I have witnessed its strength, its gentleness, its vitality. But most of all, it gave me the one thing I needed in abundance.

Solitude.

Solitude has been my sole companion, my drug. Comforting me in my time of need. Welcoming me with open arms. I have learned to embrace it. I have learned to love it….tears streaming…I have learned to live, I have learned to love.

“Man is neither good nor evil, he just is.” A wise man I once knew told me, lifetimes ago, to a different me, a better me. Holding me with those piercing blue eyes of his…staring into the depths of my soul…stripping my soul bare with his infinite wisdom. He said the one thing I wanted to know, the one comfort I craved…the one lie I wanted to hear.

It was a long time later that I understood what he meant. Is it too late I wonder…to turn back, All those eyes….looking at me with their dying breath, cursing me with their last breath. I carry their will, their hatred and their lives within me. My life encompasses theirs. I have destroyed infinite possibilities, I have created infinite possibilities. I am the trunk, branching infinitely. Their joys, their sorrows, their shame and their pride, it is mine to bear.

This is my life. Take from it what you will. Judge me how you will. I will be long gone…lying down in a meadow, staring at the moon, tears streaming…in nature’s lap… the journey ending where it all started.