Back. Back again. We always find ourselves back. Back where it began. The carpet. The rug. The walls, the hanging lights. The sound of cars outside, sluicing through the rain.
And your thoughts, always your thoughts, always the same thoughts. Old, new, all versions of you. All still existing. That small version of you. The teenager. All that bravado and energy. All that grief and anxiety. All of it wraps itself around you like wire, like twine, like ropes from which you cannot escape.
For these are the very strands of your consciousness; the very fibre of your self.
Your pain becomes a part of you. Imprinted onto your psyche, a burning brand upon your brain.
To deny this is to deny yourself dignity of your strength.
Like a pillar of ancient stone chipped away at by swords and vandals and the wind and time and vandals; cracked now and overgrown by a field of wild grass. Forgotten perhaps except for the old farmer who grazes his sheep nearby and then, perhaps, even forgotten by him.
Alone beneath the grand sky. Alone and broken and overgrown and forgotten. But still there.
You are still there.
Michael Scott Hand 