You wake up. The soft coos of an owl lull you out of the darkness from which you came into the first throb of a vicious headache; cricket chirps reach your ears. You notice that your feet are bare, and the ground seems like a dense sponge beneath your feet. It breathes with you. Then evergreen fills your nostrils and you feel the leaves crunch between your toes in sharp snaps that might be heard for miles around, and you know you’re outside.
Sit up; then stand. A step forward and some grotesque wall assaults you from the front. Your hands spastically feel in front of you- a desperate attempt at self preservation- and come in contact with a distinct texture: bark. Like some immense miniature maze, you let your hands follow the crevices as you side step your way around the left side of the tree. A throb brings your hands up to cradle your aching skull, but you flinch away in cold shock. Your hands are wet, maybe even sticky, so you walk towards the sound of flowing water.
On the way you trip once or twice; it’s slightly downhill. But the harsh whisper of the rushing water serves as your North Star, and soon the tips of your toes touch cool, clean relief. Kneeling by the side of the stream, you let your arms drop beside you and your hands touch the cathartic cure below. What had tainted your hands and left you so confused and overwhelmed rushes away from you with the current.
Finally calm again, you let yourself sit back on edge of the stream, let yourself feel the sunlight on your face. And like a sixteen-wheeler heading down rt. 88 doing 80 mph, it hits you; you can feel the sun, but can’t see it. The world around you is black, and all that’s in it is dark, colorless, nothing. But the sun can burn your face and the twigs pinch the heels of your feet and wind bite against your cold, brittle skin. You know you’re alive, that’s no longer the worry. But the world is empty, and you’ve been dropped in the middle of it.
Take a breath in, and then let it out. Now, repeat. Staying calm is key because when your heart starts stomping out fast paced parades about your body and up on into your brain, you can’t hear the water steam off the surface of a puddle in the heat of the midday sun, or the soft tread of a chipmunk bustling about its business to your right, or the crisp echo of a gunshot miles away. It’s the listening that saves you; using every ounce of brainpower that once served your visual cortex and redirecting it to sound, smell, and touch. Self-reliance in the most primal of ways.
And that intrinsic knowledge of my ability to persevere was key when a moment later I had an epiphany. All at once I realized that not only was I alone in a forest with no recollection of how I got there, but also, I was blind. Luckily, I realized a tenth of a second later that the blindness was nothing new.
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I'm not too sure where I want to go with this, or if it will go anywhere. But the idea came to mind and I needed to get it down.
