Second Chance LJ Idol, Week 2, Topic: Irreversable
When an illusion breaks, the path from past to future can no longer be traversed.
When I was 18, perhaps the biggest illusion of my life, that my father was a loving, caring man broke into a million pieces. In one violent, confusing, drunken night he showed his true colors to my mother and I, and broke the illusion that we'd lived under for my entire life.
I won't go into detail as to what happened, as such details are unimportant. But as that illusion faded, so did others. The illusion that he had been faithful to my mother. The illusion he ever cared about anyone else. The illusion that he had been a veteran who had been injured in war.
One by one, they all fell down. The path of illusions that had built my life fell away. And at first, that was all that fell away.
But soon, I saw illusions instilled into me fall away too. An illusion of weakness, of hesitation, of being weak and disappointing. The illusion of finding it necessary to "act like a man"... all these illusions that had been put on me by someone else. These illusions which had, honestly, made up my entire childhood and bound up my personality, pinned it down and kept me from being my true self had fallen away.
The path to the 'me' who I would have become, walking along a glass trail of illusions has crumbled. I no longer am that person. I can no longer continue growing as that person. Now I walk a trail of dirt and grass, with nature beneath my feet.
I can't turn back and walk the path I once was. The bridge that formed that path is gone.
Not that I would ever want to.
When I was 18, perhaps the biggest illusion of my life, that my father was a loving, caring man broke into a million pieces. In one violent, confusing, drunken night he showed his true colors to my mother and I, and broke the illusion that we'd lived under for my entire life.
I won't go into detail as to what happened, as such details are unimportant. But as that illusion faded, so did others. The illusion that he had been faithful to my mother. The illusion he ever cared about anyone else. The illusion that he had been a veteran who had been injured in war.
One by one, they all fell down. The path of illusions that had built my life fell away. And at first, that was all that fell away.
But soon, I saw illusions instilled into me fall away too. An illusion of weakness, of hesitation, of being weak and disappointing. The illusion of finding it necessary to "act like a man"... all these illusions that had been put on me by someone else. These illusions which had, honestly, made up my entire childhood and bound up my personality, pinned it down and kept me from being my true self had fallen away.
The path to the 'me' who I would have become, walking along a glass trail of illusions has crumbled. I no longer am that person. I can no longer continue growing as that person. Now I walk a trail of dirt and grass, with nature beneath my feet.
I can't turn back and walk the path I once was. The bridge that formed that path is gone.
Not that I would ever want to.