The Right Path

It was dark. Her eyes started to flutter and she started to see light. Her eyes opened to a world of light and blurs, until a few minutes later her vision cleared. She saw trees looming above her, leaves littering the ground, and two paths on the road that she was on. She was calm, almost at peace, but she wondered how she got here since the last thing she remembered seeing was tiled floors and the seat of a toilet. She gazed at the path starting to walk closer, wondering where they led. As she neared them she saw two paths that were so different that they seemed like two places of completely different worlds. The one on the right, it could hardly be comprehended. The trees were young, their bark was smooth like an orb of glass, the leaves as green as an emerald, and the light was like a sun ray shining through a cloud. Then turning to look at the path on the left, almost expecting something angelic like the previous one but it was nothing of the sort. The atmosphere was dark like midnight, the trees as thin as a skeleton, the underbrush crawled with creatures. Their eyes were yellow, filled with menace, their whispers echoing through the dank forest. What are you doing here? She felt the hairs on the back of her neck begin to life after she gazed down the path, and turned away.

Again, she looked at the right. She had never experienced this path before, and it had an angelic peace to it, knowing that it would all end so soon. But the left had dozens of memories to it and she was sucked into them yet again as she looked. Her first day of middle school, people scoffed, stared, and whispered. They pushed her, told her to go away, never caring where they hit. But they hit, and it landed deep where no one could see. Then, she flashed to just a few years back. Her father roared at her his cheeks ruddy and the smell of alcohol on his breath as he got closer to her. She jumped as he got closer but the memory soon faded. She knew what she needed to do.

She slowly took a step and another until she was walking slowly until she reached the very spot where she would have to make a decision. She closed her eyes one last time remembering all the bullying, depression, and abuse that her life had contained before taking the path to the right. She walked slowly, cautiously afraid to disturb such beautiful peace. There were birds but they didn’t play their beautiful songs, there were leaves on the trees but they didn’t sway, and there was no wind. The sun was shining but in a hazy way, not too fierce. She got closer and closer to the edge, starting to see the beautiful blue mass. She stopped at the edge of the cliff to look into the ocean, seeing that the water looked like a soft blue blanket with barely a wave in sight. She turned around as if to go back, but instead she took one last deep breath of the beautiful air and fell. The fall was like falling onto your bed at night, soft, sweet and calming. She landed on the rocks but it didn’t hurt, it was a relief from all the pain in her life, and she cherished the moment.

Her eyes seemed to drag open, like a child being dragged to bed until they opened to a dark void with. She tried to look around to get her bearings, tried to talk, to scream, but she couldn’t. Suddenly a movement startled her and she saw a light appear. It was like watching a movie but somehow she felt connected to it. The light showed her growing up to become an adult, feeling the joy of finding her first friend, in finishing. The giddy nerve wracking feeling of talking to her first crush. The beautiful, enchanting first kiss. She smiled looking at this life, and it still continued. She saw herself getting married, the best day of her life until she gave birth to her first born child. She saw this and started to feel something grow inside her, but she ignored it as she continued watching. Years passed and she had more children, then her children grew up and she experienced the joy of becoming a grandma and being called grandma for the first time by one of her sweet grandchildren. She saw as the display began to end that this was the life that she had always wanted.

She opened her eyes, at the bottom of the deep fall on the rocks that she had fallen to and realized something. She had chosen wrong. All of her pain, fears, abuse and loneliness would’ve ended, if only she had waited. She would’ve experienced so many joys, so many first times, so many lives coming into this earth, and yet she had chosen to end it right here. She looked up at the edge of the cliff to see all of her family now and in the future crying, sobbing their hearts out. As she began to close her eyes, feeling the life drain out of her, she dropped one final tear while whispering,

“ I chose the wrong path.”

Soft footsteps walked down a small halfway toward a closed door. The footsteps walked as if they thought that the floor would open up and swallow them into an abyss for daring to make a sound. They slowly got nearer to their destination, taking care not to step on the squeaky parts of the floor. The footsteps reached the door and they hesitated before reaching their small hand to know on the large, wooden door. The only sound that could be heard throughout the whole house was the beating of their heart, the knocking, and a snoring man. There was no noise from behind the door. She knocked again, but heard nothing. She slowly opened the door whispering in a scared voice, 

“Vida? Are you ok? I-I…”

She looked down at the floor, seeing something she wished wasn’t there, wished that it would go away. The room stank, more like reeked of the smell of the liquid, she opened the door a little more and gasped at what she saw.  A body, her dearly beloved sister, it was barely recognizable, but that wasn’t what mattered. She cried, and sobbed for hours, wishing that she could have her dear sister back for just a moment to show her how much she loved her. She whispered in between sobs, brokenhearted,

“Vida, why? Why?”