The first morning...

I awoke from my exhausted collapse, that which was nothing like sleep. The lump that was my body took up no more that a quarter of the bed, the side of my face still moist from the damp pillow it still lay on. How I moved across the room, unable to stand, barely to crawl, I am unsure. My head of lead denied me balance of any kind, stooping forward dangerously…

My mind drifted in and out of consciousness on the floor where I had stopped. Time took its own course, one that took no notice of my sorry state. Once again I drifted away only to find myself stumbling out of a cold shower hours later and dressing myself. How I got there I do not know, I remember feeling dirty inside and too clearly the fear of the growing pile of my things on the new wooden floor as they left where they had been…

Walking along the winding pathways, endless and recurrent, one step at a time, one breath at a time, my fathers voice continued to give me the will to move as it had done earlier that day…

As I sit from pain my insides do not relax, this pain I realize does not stem from my muscles. It radiates from somewhere beneath, through my lungs, nose and throat until I am coughing and gasping for breath. The choking is from a tight grip closing around my neck. The hand is of my own making, a creation of my veiled thoughts. I attempt to find the source of this pain and hope that it is not from the inside but from the ground that it makes its way into me…

All this while I have been watching myself struggle. I have left that body but can feel what it feels. But the empty shell is not only missing the part of me that is floating above its head, for I feel empty too. Sick and unable to re-enter that sad self again, I am unable to be the person beneath me. The person I am supposed to be. It seems my mind and heart has for once chosen the same path. One that is so far in the opposite direction from where I am headed that it has separated itself, only to realize I am now in two, yet stuck in the same place…

I float right in front of my body, for the first time daring to look at myself from anywhere but above. I see there is a hole in my centre from where my soul is leaving my body. My soul is leaving me in search of her. Leaving me, for her.