Surrounded by gnarled trees with fading brown leaves, the not so distant sound of passing cars, and the singing birds she sat silently listening atop a mountain of rock. The singing birds flitted back and forth from tree to bush, the cool breeze rustled through the fading leaves. The shy sun nudged out from behind a cloud bank, casting her shadow across the rock.
(The shadow seemed deep in though, much like herself, mimicking her feelings only a bit better than she could. The shadow allowed the dark out after all it was made up of black and grey)
Her shadow seemed to be able to move through the writer’s block that held her stagnant. No problems or worries to hold it back. It was free to write about any and all thoughts. No need for editing, no need to worry about what other would think. It moved about in space and time with nothing holding it to one reality or the next. A rainy day and it could vanish to a world where the sun was shining, only to return when the rain had stopped. A fair weather friend, something she was used to. Perhaps one of the reasons she was always sitting on that rock alone. Maybe she wanted to be alone maybe it was easier than editing her life, and smiling a smile that never went deeper than her lips. It wasn’t that she was unhappy, but she wasn’t happy either. She was just alive.
(She searched for someone like minded)
She often wondered, if her life were a personification of something, what was it? Loneliness, unhappiness, maybe disillusionment. Was there another version of her somewhere living a better life, or just living life better? If she could tear through reality would she find another her searching too for something, or would she find someone contented enough to not have to look. What was life supposed to be like anyway? Like on TV or in books? Was happiness a real thing or did we make it up to explain the people who were too stupid to think life wasn’t great?
Life is a seemingly meaningless series of events which is only made meaningful by her perception of time. If it all happened instantaneously would she care at all if she were happy or sad? Would she be indifferent to it all? If she knew in the next second a totally new event would fall upon her, making the last totally irrelevant, would she even recall the previous moment or would she live totally in the present.
Is it only her sense of time and space that lets her live in the past? That lets her relive the negative times in her life over and over, punishing herself. Or does she really need to, in order to learn something from it all. Is that other girl sitting on a rock alone questioning everything, or is time passing so quickly there is nothing for her to question?
Are the happy people really stupid, or have they actually found a level of contentment that is perfect? Or are all those happy people just well medicated? Can happiness be found in a bottle of pills? Or is it just a bottleful of blinders?
Sitting on the rock the world melts away, thoughts float freely, and hand scribbles nonsense down. The shadow and herself, both writing and writing, looking for meaning in the universe, but finding only more questions. Watching the birds flit, the leaves fade, the clouds drift, time passes.
She stops writing, at a loss for what to write, too many questions swirling in her mind. Standing she leaves the rock, her shadow trailing. There is so much going on in her head she wants to scream, just stop walking and scream out loud. Would people care? Would they notice, would the worry and run away? People would think she was crazy, having a nervous breakdown. They would medicate her and put her in a room, so she could analyze herself some more threw a fog of drugs.
Perhaps it would be a nice vacation, time away from the worries of a job, and mundane things like paying the rent. Meals served at 8, 12, and 5 each with a serving of blue, red and yellow pills. One to make you happy, one to make you tired, and the third to make you not care about the other two. Not caring at all. Spending day after day writing in journals and starting out windows, discussing the few odd thoughts that could form clearing in the medicinal haze that has become her mind. Then slowly weaning her on to only one happy pill, and telling her she is sane again, free to rejoin her shadow in the sun. The rain would stop, and back shadow would come.
Of course she doesn’t scream, because she doesn’t want that vacation. She doesn’t want to become another pharmaceutically lobotomized happy-stupid person.
She just keeps walking, faded leaves falling at her feet, birds flitting, back to life, worries, writer’s block. The reality she knows, because the alternatives don’t seem that appealing. She prefers to question it all, rather than just accept it. After all, she has the time to.