Catharsis

The following is a short story about a girl who had a catharsis about her strength. The girl hopes that one day, just like her, you will be able be able find your inner strength to get out of the woods.

Once again, she was lost in the woods. She’d found her way out once before but the trees have grown and the path is now overgrown with weeds and miserable dandelions. The forests breath lingers on her fingertips and she feels its heartbeat with each crunch of the leaves beneath her feet. She wonders if it can hear the silent wailing of her heart that’s echoing through her chest and into the soles of her feet. She’d been walking for so long that her eyes had forgotten how to see and her mouth was always silent but her lips were always quivering. Shaking. Trembling.

She let her mind dream and wander through the pain, the hurt and the sorrow. Through the trees, the branches and the leaves. The rain and the Summer and the Autumn that never came. She let herself re-visit her now bittersweet memories and re-visit their warmth. She bathed in its warmth and it was only through bathing in its warmth that she started to notice the goosebumps that slowly started to crawl its way onto her skin and into her heart. She started to see the weeds starting to grow between the cracks and the cracks starting to get bigger and bigger until they swallowed her whole and spat out her bones. Broken, she tried to sew herself back together but her heart was too heavy for her frail bones. She tried to rest but her mind kept remembering and her eyes kept longing and the tears kept pouring.

It never stopped raining and the sky was always grey. Still, her soul kept waiting for the sun to rise and release the drought. She yearned for it to be like before; a time when rain was scare and it was always summer. She had always prayed for an endless summer but it appeared that no one had been listening. It felt like no-one ever listened.

Not much longer to go now. Or so she hoped. The last time she walked this far, she thought she wouldn’t make it. The climb was steep and her pain was raw. She didn’t know how she’d did it. She wishes that she would remember. Maybe then it this would be easier. Maybe then her heart, lungs and swollen eyes would mend and she would finally have a restful night.

It’s hard when the thing you’re used to suddenly gets taken away from you. When your heart feels full and then it suddenly feels empty. When your bones start to ache and your smile starts to fade. When the sun goes way and the rain comes to stay. When the meadow becomes a forest and the path sinks into the soil. What do you do then?

You keep walking. She keeps walking. Trying to find the path. Trying to find the clearing that she knows is somewhere up ahead. It’s finding the somewhere that’s the challenging part. Somewhere could be anywhere. Just like someone could be anyone and a lover can turn into a stranger with a flip of a coin. She thought she’d finally mastered the art of flipping the coin, but it had lead her back into the forest.

It was same routine every day, until that one day that she stopped looking for the old path after having the realisation that it may have been, in fact, uneven and had one or two cracks, maybe even more. Cracks that once seemed forgotten and overwritten by the adoring heart. It was then that the trees parted and she was able to find herself out of the woods.