Two Roads Diverged.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and I…

I took one path without much thought as to why. To be clear, that yellow wood was my life when I was young and impressionable, and that choice between paths was the difference of two entirely different lives I might have lived. That decision is the most notable division in my life, a point where I can glance back and see the diverging traffic and follow the transcript each option as if it had the chance to grow and culminate into separate timelines where one holds the person that I became and the other knows only a stranger that I fear to be. I recognise a canyon of difference between the person I became and that person that may have been had I made a different choice and it is startling. This is the point in my life where the path wasn't necessarily forged out in front of me with set slabs of pavement, but more a tugging of influences from either direction that could have torn me apart had I not chosen to step one way or the other and force those paths to separate.

I had a tumultuous time growing up, as did most. A childhood littered with difficulties; but for that sake of this story most notably bullying, borne from being a shade of unique just outside of what school children know to comprehend. It got so bad that at one point I was physically beaten by a group of boys hungry on their prepubescent power and the need to prove themselves, though I still don't understand how such a display would gain them anything. The ensuing embarrassment of having to point out each face I could remember from every classroom that I was dragged to so the principal could ensure that a punishment was delivered, well that was an embarrassment I couldn't recover from and a slight my parents were not willing to forgive.

I survived the remainder of that school year relishing in my insignificance, relieved that the entertainment of tormenting me had lived out its course before I was moving on the next year and welcoming in a whole new kind of hell. To put it simply; by the age of eight I had discovered that psychological bullying was far more difficult to tolerate than physical. I found that where physical suffering has tangible signs that you can wear with pride knowing that you survived something unpleasant; mental bullying casts a shadow of grief that only the practised eye can see within you, or detect in the silence that slowly takes over. It's a shift in personality where your vibrancy is diminished much like a flower that's gone too long without sunlight.

This struggle I encountered was the edge of that yellow forest, a fringe of straggling saplings where that tugging at my sides began. Each step took me further in to where the canopy shattered the light into endless fragments, shadowing everything. It was here that my decisions started to be directed by the things around me rather than my own mind.

After the first school full of shallow wounds and a second school full of shallow people and deeper wounds inflicted by games I was destined to lose, I was determined for the third school to be my last. Hopelessly hopeful to avoid the acquisition of new scars since the old ones had yet to fade. I built a shield around my heart made of scrap metal bravado and fear; welded together with the misguided belief that it would survive the torture of teenage years.

I had developed an aggressive form of external confidence that I wielded like a weapon. I shortened my skirt, coloured my hair, always wore shades to cover my eyes and hoped no one would see through it all to the scared little girl hiding beneath. This is where the tugging became a tearing and the branches of those trees closed in and I was forced to become a temporary arborist in order to cut my way through. I was irrational and angry and acting on the instinct to survive the battlefield of adolescence. The only restraint to my chaos was expectation, the weight of it stoking the fire of my need to impress but occasionally it would flare into the fear that I would never be enough.

I became a pendulum hurtling between a halo and horns, my sanity and sin depicted in decent grades and playground fights as I continued to desperately hack my way through highschool. There were no trail signs, I was going in blind, cutting away at the underbrush. I could have cut those trees in any direction, forged any path possible while fully aware that not every one of them led to a safe or happy ending, but not really caring so long as I got through.

Each tree felled was chosen by a moment as simple as a passing comment or as complex as an introduction. More than ninety percent on a test, *timber*. A boy antagonising a group of girls at lunch, *timber*. Suspended for fighting that same boy to teach him some manners, *timber*. Every possibility that would eventuate as a change within me can be counted among the rings on those tree stumps, their knots and grains a topography of my life's design, my every potential written in the bark and spelled out in fallen leaves.

Part way through a thicket of indecision and overgrown frustrations I saw someone. A quiet stranger standing in the foliage a ways away, marking a path behind her as she walked. I met her on the library stairs, a place I would frequent to stir trouble or sit in silence depending on where the pendulum hung that day. Her name and kind eyes were all I needed to recognise a kinship. It was as if the forest had finally offered a reprieve, a hint to the answers of questions I was unaware had even been asked.

Here is where the two roads diverged, a sundering of significance stark against the narrow treads of simpler things like fashion choices and incomplete homework. Though they were not yet cut, the possibilities of each parh were clear before me, as if each tree had a single notch already pre-cut, just waiting for the final blow. After one conversation I was drawn to that stranger like a flame is to tinder and I followed her down that marked way until we walked arm-in-arm as friends. She taught me how to replace my rebellion with reading and my sharp tongue was reforged to be put to greater use. She helped me to reconcile my anger and shape it into something useful rather than gripping its double-edged blade and hurting myself as much as those around me. It was through her that I found peace and joy for the first time in as long as I could remember. It was through her that I discovered how to untangle the knots of my own thoughts to then re-weave them like poetry.

It wasn't until years down that path that I looked back and realised how far I'd travelled from the girl I used to be. It took me a long time to understand how close I had been to becoming a person that my parents couldn't be proud of, someone that I couldn't be proud of.

I have often since pondered the possibilities of the "what if" had I never found her in that wood. What vices would have stood in the place of the stories she taught me to love; what outlet would I have abused had I not had the egress of ink on paper. I'm terrified of the person I could have become without that stranger in the forest who became a part of my soul, without her constance teaching me that I could never be alone with her in my life, especially with the love of literature she gifted me. She helped me turn those trees, that had once stood as obstacles, into paper. Showing me how to bind them into stories so I could express my truths without fear.

Her own path has since diverged into the inevitability that is adulthood, but it runs parallel to mine. Our trails often wander apart for months at a time without us catching sight of one another but I see her inspiration scattered throughout elements of my life and smile knowing that her influence guides me still. Every finished book is a gentle thanks to the clarity I am not even sure she understands she gave to me. It brings me peace to know that she will always be a part of me and happiness knowing that she will be there when we both emerge on the other side of this forest; and when I eventually make it through as someone I can be proud of, it is her that I'll have to thank for it.