It’s cold again; another day spent shivering and holding my body trying to find warmth. One more cold day and I will surrender. I will lay down in the snow and let it bury me in an ice coffin. I cannot survive in these dire temperatures.
I find myself having to remove ice chips from my shoulder at such a rapid and volatile rate I must appear as a small ice storm to others. My body has begun to freeze and it has become a battle with my limbs to move the slightest bit onward. It’s been so cold here where it was once so warm beneath the Sun. The Sun is so far gone now it seems to have disappeared into an abyss. It’s been such a long time now sense I’ve seen it that I don’t even know what I’m looking for when I search for it. This struggle to move on and out wouldn’t seem so in vain if I could only get a taste of the warmth I seek. Nevertheless, I fell nothing but numb and continue to go about with no purpose, aimlessly searching for the light. Without realizing where I had wondered to, I found myself in a familiar place within a white frosted forest. It was here within it at this silvery glazed stream I sat to collect my thoughts and myself. Here I sat on an old, rotting stump in the ground at the waters edge. The Moon shone an eerie blue illumination over the stream to make the ice glimmer and shimmer and suddenly it all came rushing back to me. I remembered the last time I sat here while the stream was still flowing and it was the Sun that made it glisten in this way. I would sit here and write pages of my every thought and emotion. I was so alive then, but I could see it. I took for granted all the goodness I had and could only focus on the minor displeasures I came across. Little things such as, negative people that affect me only because I let them. All I had then; warmth, life, inner peace; it meant nothing to me. I wanted it to rain; I wanted it to drown me. Instead the Sun shone above me taunting me with life. I wanted the rain to saturate each page I wrote until the words oozed off the paper like the pain pouring from my eyes. Instead the cool breeze blew across my skin evaporating each tear before it left my eyes. I wanted the world to stop and sit with me on this stump. I wanted time to be still and fill these woods with silence. Instead my heart beat against my chest, echoing throughout the forest forcing me to acknowledge it was still there. My mind and body easily writing these words, I knew I was fully functional and indeed I was alive. It was thought I was murdered by every word from their tongue, but my chest rose and fell still, to give breathe to me lungs. It was clear t o me that life went on, and life went on with me, and life went on without me. I had forgotten that amidst the harsh blizzard that had fallen upon this place. Life will always go on, everything is so alive. I sat back to enjoy this sight through my new eyes and let the frost try to freeze me in this moment. It could not and in this perfect moment where experience and maturity meets opportunity, fate and hope meet to ignite a fire within one’s self that burns so hot it could melt any blizzard, and it did. At that moment the Sun pierce through the sky to kiss me a welcoming on my face. The cool, calming summer’s breeze gave me a warming embrace, so I took life’s extended hand and walked out of the woods. I don’t need to remember to live, but to never forget that I am alive. I must live, but also let live. Let the others live in misery if they so choose; it’s none of my concern. I cannot live their unhappy lives. I have my own life to live.