Chapter 2

When was the last time I experienced being whole? When every part of me in me is fixed? When I do not even ruin the world I inhabit in me? When was the last time I realized the beauty of my world? When do I know the hidden secret behind nature and life?

When I was only five years old, my mind was filled with wonders at the world including how it moved. What will be revealed at the end of the solemn symbolism of the towering heights of the wind and the pulsation?

When the world began to be seen here, is it astonishing to see with two eyes? Could it be that it will only witness how sensationally the individuals here on the surface of the earth follow the currents of the system and nature? Is it unbeknownst to me that the dream is just a nightmare where it turns out that freedom is the opposite?

In fact, I don't know the answers back then every time they suddenly appear on my mind. They also leave voluntarily when I have no enough reason to silence them.

At this point now, I wish I was just a kid. Aside from the fact that my views are still blind, I know my intellect is still fresh and I still have a lot to learn. That the steps I am taking are just towards the development of my life because it is just beginning.

But should we seek the far-reaching? Is it possible to restore the opportunity that should have happened only once? When progress, flow, and wave are reversed, can mistakes from the past be corrected?

I was running out of questions then but at the height of the fierce eruption of misty waterfalls in my heart, thousands of bleeding soldiers rushed on my mind seeking justice and answers that I knew would torment me. They were sent to calm the screaming turmoil in my heart and psyche.

I wanted to answer them. I have to. But it is way easier to just let them stay than to make them rally inside of me. I will explode and I will scatter into pieces if the reasons I'll utter will never satisfy their hunger.

They will eat me until I became nothing. Until I am left without anything. And until it will be just nothingness in me.

I was caught in my messy hair.

I still pursued driving.

I am never looking back and I never stop.

I never even know where I am and how far I am from the place I lived a few hours before this happened.

I don't know what to do anymore.

I just want to be away from where my home is. Because I thought that it is the safest decision to make. Henceforth, I felt like I lost track. It seems like it just makes me feel to be sick at the moment.

I never thought that my Dad would do that to me. I think he would battle and hold me up until the end. But it was the opposite all along. Now, reality dives in and comes on its way for me to open my eyes and see the things clearly like how I wasn't perceiving them before.

He wasn't that confident to shelter me with his warm and serene embrace. He gave me up realizing that he couldn't win the fight. Yet he hadn't jumped into the fact that he even never tried to win this battle with me.

I just thought at first. I was complacent. Also reassuring. Convinced himself that he would defend me. That he would never easily let me go. But I was wrong at first.

I was wrong to expect. He can also trust me and he will try to hold me until the end while we are next to the actuality that even if I am not his real child, he would still choose to be with me. And that reality will make us even stronger.

Ironic. Reality is more real than the expectations you only expected. A thought isn't an assumption but a hoax that is believed by the mind, and it is a fiction created to deliver us from our darkest day.

I assumed I was ready but I remained not. I am still empty because the enemy had stolen the wisdom in me and made me a fool. I wished to be a successful subject of the light but I was captured from its feathers— and so I wandered— wandering not realizing I wasn't lost— just sailing away from the lostness of reality.

So here I am, driving, wasting the gasoline in the car's tank, and wanted to disappear in the world without everyone noticing it.

At first, I want to be a part of the air, a part of the surface, a part of the sky, and a part of this world when I leave. I want to be nothingness or in a nothingness where feelings are void, and there, I can be numb.

But it changed.

The car's engine slowed down.

I could do nothing but stop it. It was dark outside. I don't see even a single light other than the car's headlights. The only thing that keeps the surroundings not to be total darkness is the pearls blazing in the night sky, staring at me, and their mother who has witnessed my agony tonight.

I cried out very loudly, struggling from the weight I was feeling in my heart I wish was gone, and the grief that suddenly awoke here in my heart would disappear.

I am not aware that I am not in the place I used to be anymore. Well, not until I heard the sound of the unseen air that raptured me, and the cold breeze it brought.

I was dumbfounded. When I felt the corners of both my eyes heat up again, I looked up and closed my eyes. I hit the steering wheel a few times before the car got out and headed to the other side of the road.

I crossed my arms and smiled bitterly. I was not scared. I was no longer shocked or surprised. This is what usually happens when you get used to it. Sometimes it becomes natural as well. Worst of all, be numb.

"I just want to die."

That's what I want to happen to me since this is the course of my destiny. I would just disappear from this world because no one cares about someone like me.

Who else cares for a child who is looking for love? Because of the stain and mark of the past, no one will try or even take pity.

"I just want to die!" I screamed loud at the top of my lungs and heard how my voice broke. "I—I just want to die."

I burst into tears. I don't know what to do at these times other than to be weak and let the resentment out of my heart.

How many times do I need to say those words to be true? That I would be dead now with a natural accident? That there would have been an earthquake and the road would have collapsed and I would have been covered with cement? Or did it rain and lightning struck me? If that happened I would be happy. Because alas! I can finally rest.

But it can't be.

Life wants me to suffer more. It wants me to struggle and to feel the undying and unfamiliar pain in my heart. Never did life wants me to be freed from its terrible grip. Everlasting is its curse and how it wants to torture me.

I rubbed the hot liquid kissing on my cheek, take a deep breath after. I clenched my fist.

It was normal back then. When she's not dead. When she was still here with me. It wasn't this worse. But from what I can see now, there seems to be no real hope.

I turned to the car. I was about to walk there when I caught the attention of a man in a black cloak who pierced his every stare at me.

It didn't give me any chills upon knowing someone I never met before is here. A few meters between the two of us. I could not clearly see his face but I noticed that he was staring back at me.

I stepped closer to him. I was nearer. His familiar eyes are closer so as his unmoving body. He gazes with manipulating dark sight that reflects the moon from above. I grew the steps.

When he realized I seemed to be in a hurry, he walked back before looking behind him and runs away from me. I didn't expect that.

"Wait!" I called him.

Then chased him.

He jumped on the guardrail on the side of the road, then dashed to the grass field all the way to the forest is the root he has taken after a while. He's too fast!

I stopped in front of the barricade. Where is he going? I watched him leave. I never saw him again when the whole forest swallowed him.

But the darkness and the forest did not stop me from tracking him. So I kept running, also jumped over the block, and headed straight for the rough terrain. When I was at the mouth of it, I absolutely traced the inside of it.

I paused for a moment.

Lots of trees.

Smoky.

Windy.

It's dark.

The silence is deafening.

I took a deep breath before continuing what needed to be done at this time.

I don't know why I am following an absolute stranger who wears a cloak. I don't know why I am doing this. I just want to know a few things like why is he here? Or what is this place and where is it located? Are there any specific places I can stay at?

I shouldn't have gone this far_ or I wish I knew this place so I knew where I was going.

I am so idiot and desperate.

Even though my knees were shaking, I kept running. I just went straight while avoiding the branches, the trees themselves, and some vegetation that blocked my path.

Almost the only time I did that. I also don't look behind me and on either side of me.

I stumbled causing me to scream in pain affected by a designed ripped on my jeans now hanging on a sharp stump, stabbing my knee. It's not that bad but I'm still in pain as if the imperfect cut created here seems to be stifling to wake me up to the truth.

I closed my eyes tightly before facing the tree in front of me. I was shocked to see a mysterious object with engraved words.

FOREST SURVIVAL

Still, I don't know why but somehow it made me at ease, but not some kind of ease that is familiar for it is strange— oddly dissimilar. I can't even expect and forefeel what's waiting ahead of me. Never I had divulged it is part of that I will ideate as it will occur in reality sooner.