Someday we will foresee obstacles through the blizzard.
We played hide and seek in waterfalls.
We were younger.
-"Obstacles", Syd Matters -
The little picture writhes between my fingers and I allow my eyes to focus on it. Maybe I hoped the water pouring from the sky had made it unusable, but not even the rain comes to my aid in taking the necessity of this decision away from my hands.
Instead, the semi-rigid polaroid film isn't affected at all, because the noise it makes in ripping is quite sharp, not the soft one of soaked paper.
Once I open my fingers the twin fragments fly away as butterfly wings, but under the steady force of the wind the flight is straight for once, without hesitations; they are carried far away, soon lost into the storm.
I realize it wasn't really a choice: the alternative decision would simply not be so alternative after all – a tail-biting snake.
Going back one more time? To live again in the past – and I mean literally – in order to deny my choices when there has been a time I considered them correct? To keep on being just a frightened child?
- Not anymore.
The vision of this Ending manifested itself to me way before my powers did: those came when I wished I could save you. And the decisions I made, all of them with no exception, I made them because I wanted to shield you from pain.
The doe is not around because she already brought me in this exact place what seems like an eternity ago; I almost forgot: she showed me the way through the storm even before we met again. You may be the reason behind my decisions, but not the cause of their outcomes.
It's my right to fail, and I denied myself that. And this is not about my powers – it's me.
That picture I ripped in the school bathroom... I destroyed it because overthinking led to second-guessing, to believe it was worthless; but when I took the shot I remember I hadn't felt that way. I was leery to face a possible rejection, other people's judgement...
You suggested I borrowed Rachel's clothes and I feared you'd compare the two of us, finding me lacking. But it was I who made such comparison.
It was I who kept finding me lacking.
But I remember you saying I can afford to take chances, whenever and whatever I want to try...
I'm starting to think you put the picture in my hands to see how far I'd be willing to go, if I'd have braved to take a risk, to face responsibility for once. Another dare, like that time in your bedroom?
And like that time in your bedroom, when you backed away at the slightest contact of my lips on your own, again I fear I may have dared way too much.
But facing the tornado raging in the small bay, connecting sky and sea, though I'm scared shitless about what's to happen I still have no regrets. It doesn't even cross my mind to rewind up to the point to have that goddamn butterfly back in my hands.
I think I've learnt my lesson.
The past is in the past: if all this is the outcome of my wish to exist for you, to be here for you, then maybe it was the rest of our world, not you, to be marked for death even before the start.
Is this what Jefferson meant with "loss of innocence"?
After all even a lighthouse, a universal symbol of safety through raging weather, is a constant cycle of light and darkness.
I guess if one could frame a life, the resulting picture would be a beautiful chiaroscuro...
I tried to strighten the chaotic flight of a butterfly. Maybe I'm doomed to failure, but I think I'm going to keep trying.
I know I'm bound to make mistakes; then I will simply accept the past and the responsibility it brings me.
But I swear I will always keep going forward.