Staid

The Wall

There is a sound. Sometimes it is a happy sound, so loud and strong it fills us with joy no matter how bleak the future seems. Sometimes it is a sad sound, so fragile and broken that its' echoes haunt us no matter where we go. It is a fickle sound, but one we require. One we search for. We chase it now...

We've encountered a wall.

This wall takes the form of failures we would have had but for lack of trying. On it are scrawled things like 'Rejected by a pretty girl', 'Didn't get the job', 'Failed to reach the summit', 'Couldn't lose the weight', 'Didn't make the cut', and 'Story got sent back'.

This wall of would be failures looms large a now constant reminder of the limitations of success-by-stagnancy. The old men we would have been stand stock still at the foot of the wall, cadaverous harbingers of futures unseen.

Obsidian windows lay at the end of long dark porticoes, eyes for us to stare through. Here we see the mothers of our unborn children, in another the warriors we would have stood with in fights we left unfought.

And as we stumble through the the thorny undergrowth along the wall, each prick a frustration or regret we've almost forgotten ('I wanted to make a right there', 'Why didn't I wear a tie?', 'I should have ordered the fish'), we find a door. The door. And we realize that this wall isn't a barrier...it's a building. A home for everything that wasn't perfect in our lives.

It's a very large building.

The door is open. The wall stretches in all directions, there is no way around. We have no choice but to step inside. The door closes behind us.

To the left stands our 4th grade teacher, she wants to play a game. We're not totally comfortable with the idea, but we play along as it's all in good fun. There is deception. We feel guilty, and crack quickly. Later we feel badly. Ten year old apologies. Not worth the tears that swallow them.

A little further down the hall is the pretty girl in our freshman year biology class. Probably shouldn't have stared so much.

Making a right at the end of the first hall we find ourselves standing in a large cavernous room whose ceiling floats so high above us that it's lost to all but our imaginations. This room is empty. This room is absence. This is the room that would have been filled with all the things we've lost in our lives. Instead it's filled with invisible siblings, sadness and longing.

We retreat. Quickly.

The next hall has several cages. In each sits one fear of ours. In this cage is a cliff, in this one a serpent. In this cage is chewed bubble gum.

Rounding a corner the ghosts of our fathers shamble back and forth, moaning in whispered voices 'You were never good enough', 'We never loved you', 'Why couldn't you have been more like me?' And their glowing hands give way to rotting flesh and now these paternal zombies paw at us as we push our way through.

We are shaken. Tears form in our eyes as we wander through a mausoleum where lie the frozen forms of all those we loved who went before us sitting neatly next to icy blocks which hide the faces of those we would have loved but who passed before we had a chance to know them.

The next room is an atrium and a sun more bright than any we've seen lights sets the room aglow in splendor. Here is fantasy. Every woman we've ever wanted, every toy we never had, every story told the way we wanted. Is this our reward? And then the shadows as clouds pass across the sun the subtle dark reveals the true nature of our desires. Skeletons and cobwebs, aching pain echoing off the remnants of the things we had instead. Misery. Again we run.

And now we pass by a theatre, our sins laid bare on the stage for all the world to see. We pass through rooms of filth and dirt, unsure of what they mean but still carrying with us from them a deep sense of undue guilt. And now we reach a set of stairs that winds down into darkness, that dull steady echo reverberating from a sight unseen. Down we go.

We wander through the silent darkness lost in our memories of sound and light until we reach a wall. There is no exit. We turn around only to find another wall blocking our way back. To both our sides we find the same. We are trapped. It grows darker. It grows hotter. we are afraid.

And then we hear the sound. That dull steady beat that led us down the stairs, now swelling up from somewhere nearby. It grows louder and louder drawing closer till it seems like it is right on top of us, and then it grows louder still. And then we know. The sound is that of our own heartbeat. That which we are chasing has always been inside of us.

A cool breeze tells us the dungeon we're trapped in has changed, and behind us in the distance we see the dimly lit silhouette of a doorway. We move towards it, and when we step through it we find ourselves in the exact same place we started. Standing just outside the door in the wall through which we entered.

Even though everything is the same, we know we've left it all behind.

We move on.