Caves

I've always had an affinity for caves; those cold, dark, damp places. Sometimes I think, if I could just find my cave - a place where I could hide from the world, couldn't screw anything up, not subject anyone this damned oversensitivity and erratic mood swings that make me feel so unstable and wrong - if I could just find a permanent hiding place, everything would be fine. Life would be...perfect.

I started hiding in grade school - during recess and lunchtime, to avoid a playground full of bullies - choosing instead, the quiet company of leafy green trees. By the time I reached high school, my goal of being as invisible and overlooked as the desks and chairs crowding our classrooms had come to fruition. I was a ghost. Unfortunately this also meant I didn't have any positive impacts on my school or classmates; I was simply a nonentity, drifting through life and praying for death because it hurt too much to live.

There are days when I wish my corporeal self would disappear. I imagine walking through a forest's morning mist, traveling deeper and deeper into the morass, until the trees and ground cease to exist. It's just me and the mist. I hold out my arms, feel the precipitation dancing along my skin, only to realize the moisture and my flesh are turning to one. I am fading to obscurity, my body disintegrating into vapor; I become liquid, floating on air.

When the sun comes and the fog evaporates, I dissolve along with it and am carried away, beyond the veil of one world to another. A world filled with music and fairy folk, where magic is tangible, hovering in the air like perfume and I am surrounded by cave-filled hills. All I need do is explore this world at my own pace; listen to the measure of my heart and follow it until I'm led to my cave...to my home.