It is dark and cold but I can feel it that I am moving. It is not really a push more of a flow that I glide with. And it is slow, very slow. Almost as an escargot but they are faster, they reach the light at the end of a tunnel, they see the end, they can feel it. I can’t. I just feel that I am being moved but everything looks the same. It is still pitch dark and I cannot see anything. I have always wondered where I am and what light would look like. A long time ago somewhere in my memories locked away I knew how the light looked like but it got forgotten. If you stop thinking about something it eventually disappears. And not only a memory dies but also a part of your past character. A piece that made you who you were in the past at some point is gone. It disappears like a tear in rain that drops to the ground. While it rolls down your face it exists, you feel it but once it hits the puddle it is gone. Just gone. And maybe that is where I am. This dark place is maybe the forgotten place, the place where every memory, every object, every living being sooner or later ends up: The darkness. A collection of everything that once was being thought of, that once had some importance somewhere and even if it was just for a split second it did. But this is different from death because we - and maybe I will just allow myself to speak for everything in the darkness - still live, we still exist but we got forgotten. And we forgot ourselves. It is what happens when you stare into constant darkness, when nobody asks for you, when nobody cares about you your memories will start to shred off like a block of parmesan cheese that you move up & down a cheese grinder.
Today is different. I can feel it, we are moving faster than usually. It is not by a lot but we are. If you have spent so much time in here that you cannot tell how long you’ve been here you will start to feel any slight difference. And the darkness is not that dark anymore it is almost as if it is getting lighter. It is not much but I can tell it is getting just a touch brighter. And memories about light are starting to come back, things I have known and felt a long time ago are suddenly emerging. How could I have forgotten such beautiful memories? I wish I didn’t but I did.
It is getting faster and faster. I am being pushed and thrown around, I can see others and for the first time I realize where I am. It is the ocean and it seems we must be close to the land because any time I land on the ground I can still see the light, I can see others and I see the water. There is no darkness it has been all overtaken by light and with the light a lot of past memories are coming back, a lot of feelings I once had, a lot of thoughts, a lot of worries, and a lot of anxiety. A whole rainbow of emotions. And then it happens with an immense power and burst I end up on the beach a place I once knew and I was very familiar with. A place where lots of others will come, pick you up and then either take you home or drop you again. I remember the emotions I felt any time I got picked up, it was a burst of energy, I would heat up by the warm hands that picked me up and I was wishing to be kept. To be taken home. I didn’t care where the home was, I didn’t care if it was far away or close. I just wanted to be home. I wanted to be placed on someone’s shelves and be stared at from time to time. Maybe once a month the dust gets cleaned off me but in all cases I did not want to be swallowed by the ocean again. I did not want to lose my memories and my feelings again. But I remember I never got taken home, I got inspected dropped and forgotten. My importance for every hand was like a single tear that you cry. And then I remember how I was looking at the full moon not knowing that was the end. But I hope this time will be different.
Now, hope flickers anew, though I recognize its dual nature as both salvation and torment. Is not hope itself the most exquisite form of suffering — the consciousness of possibility within the prison of probability? Yet without it, what remains but the certainty of darkness?