Three Paces

There was little to be said about the slab of stone that stood at her feet. A green tinge had coated the outside of the stone, reaching up from the ground in thick tentacles of vines and moss, algae and other plant matter. These vivid green tendrils slowly faded as the stone stretched aware from the ground, fading into a deep grey. It was an unmarked stone. Or at least, she wishes it was. The earth was so clearly trying to reclaim this stone that stood before her, the plant life a sign that of the shame mother nature felt towards what she had created, what she had allowed to step foot upon her soil. But that is the point, is it not? To remember. The pain that we feel, the anguish that we toil in, to see that things within this world can not only be bad. They can be worse. They can dig into the tired outstretched threads of our soul trying to hold together all that we care for, all those we hold dear. And it pulls. It tears. It stretches you so thinly that you can’t hide your pain, and in the same breath you cannot reveal it to the world. If you try to fight against it, the pain will resist. Sometimes it resists a little less and for a brief moment you can feel a bit more whole. Other times the pain resists harder than you can ever hope to pull and new tears open up. And now the core of your soul is bared to the world, not out of desperation or choice, but out of the sheer rupture of your humanity as all your failed hopes and dreams and all your losses are laid bare and then immediately washed away by the scorn of those who cannot be asked to understand what you lost, nor can you ask them to.

Here lies a man, or what once was a man. I’m not sure if you can call a man a monster, or a monster a man. He… it… looked like a man, of that she is certain. Acted like a man, at least when others were looking. From what she heard he even talked like one, speaking eloquently of the good things to come, and the joys to be had both on Earth and elsewhere. I still don’t understand where this ‘elsewhere’ is, or what joy it could possibly possess. Maybe when you’re a monster you need that hope. You need to believe that things can be better. Not necessarily for you, but for the others around you. Your actions may be bad. Your words may be dripping with poison, and like Pandora you will evils into the world that you know so well. But at least Pandora knew not what she did. You know fully well what they are, but in your mind they don’t matter. For the monster, the end of all things will be marked by joy. You belief that all those deserving will experience joy and happiness, you included, and all that has passed can be forgotten. And you can enjoy your new life convincing yourself that you were the best person that you could have been. And you can go home believing that you did everything right. And the people who think they know you can mourn your loss and talk about all the amazing things that you accomplished. You will be given a stone to commemorate all the false memories that you crafted in others. Now she stands, three paces away.

It had to be three. Four was certainly too far. She had to squint and strain, and the light peering through the leaves was much too distracting. It wasn’t that she couldn’t see the stone. The stone was written on, and in a language she understood no less. She may have been over reaching to call it unmarked before, but that was the disbelief talking. The disbelief that a monster could work its way so deeply into fabric of her reality. To mock her? Three paces was as close as she needed to be, as close as she could be. It was close enough to believe her eyes. It was close enough to believe her heart. It was close enough for the tears to well up and blur her vision. Luckily, when you can see with your heart, you no longer need your eyes.

She didn’t need to know whether three paces was too far or too close. She could feel it. From here, to peer at the ground was all she could bear for any amount of time. She knew that keeping her head down could keep her safe, or at least help her feel safe. Looking at the soil, she wondered if it was possible for anything to live in this grass. The grass was alive. It was always alive. They always put so much effort into making the grass green. And if you really wanted to fork out the cash, they would even put out flowers every week to help cover up the person you were. Sort of like polishing a turd. For a place filled with death, it was surprising to see how much the caretakers fought to keep life around.

She knew what it meant to fight for life. Or she thought she did. The memories are so vague that often you are left knitting the pieces together. Knit one, knit two. No. Start over. Knit one, purl two? She heard someone use the term popcorn once. She really disliked knitting. Though it was nice to feel like you could make… something. That you could sit down and make the world better than when you left it. For a time you believe that, and you feel you can do the same to other areas of your life. So you knit, and you knit, and you knit, and those things you thought could be stitch together really don’t fit together at all. Not like how you hoped.

Her fight for life was a lot like that. She fought so hard. She dropped everything and left. She left everything around her for you. Yes you may not have treated her fairly. You may have thrown at her some less than appealing words, among other things. And you may have left, disappeared over the horizon into a world that she didn’t know existed. In spite of this, she fought for you. She knew you were in pain, though she did not know how. She knew that you suffered, though she did not know when. She knew that you needed to be loved, though she did not know by who.

It was in this uncertainty that she decided to fight. She took those barriers that you put before her and cast them aside. She fought for you. Not because you necessarily deserved it. But because she knew that down any other path, any other road that she could foresee, there would be regret. Maybe her life would have been more fulfilling. Maybe she would be a doctor by now, either in medicine or some other field. Maybe she would even have a family. Though she knows on this paths, regret would be a near certainty.

And so she fought, and she pleaded, and you resisted. And she pleaded some more, and you resisted. And when she finally called, it was a Sunday. More specifically, June 21st. You couldn’t speak. You answered, you made sounds, but it wasn’t you. You weren’t there. So with a final push and much resistance you let her in, and she fought for you. She fought for hope. She fought for health. She fought for your life to be something even slightly more than you thought it could be. To contain something more than you hoped that it could. It was here that she met your monster. You told her the tail of how the monster pulled at you, and the monster twisted you and it stole your life and it stole your future. And you loved the monster because of it.

So here she stands. At the precipice of your pain. At the epicenter of so many years lost. Of so many hidden tears. The misunderstood emotions and anger and frustration you felt trying to make sense of what you carried in silence. The pain that fractured you and tore at every fiber of your being. The pain that twisted your ability to love, and your ability to cry, and your ability to feel like your burden could be safely borne by those who held you close.

She isn’t a doctor now. She questions daily whether she even wants a family. Yet there is no regret to be found. Five years ago now you had left her with waking pain, dreams of suffering, the horrors of absence, loss, and fear. But not regret. And now she peers up. Two paces away. She knows you. And she knows your monster. You have left scars upon this landscape, and your monster left scars upon you. Yet here she stands, two paces away, with her little black book.