New Beginnings

Family killed, friends gone. What was left in my life anymore? No matter how hard I tried to cling on, the meaning of my life continued slipping through my fingers.

I was alone. The reality was both terrifying and relaxing at the same time. Alone. Alone, perhaps for as long as I live.

I recline in my chair with a resigned sigh, reflecting on how much I’d changed—negatively. If I were my old self in the right mind, I would act. But what if I didn’t want to act? What if I’d changed because some higher power wanted me to, the higher power that controls the world? They say everything happens for a reason.

So then why do I so frequently get drunk on my depression? 

Maybe all of this is just an illusion.

Or a sign.

I close my eyes. I know where this is going. This is the path my thoughts take every day, and I know it better than I know my own neighborhood. They say the mind is too complicated to understand, and maybe it is. Maybe a normal mind is. My mind is hardly normal.

This could all just be a sign that I need to find my way back to my family. To the ones I really loved. To the ones who really loved me. To the ones who truly accepted me instead of faking it and simply accepting me to appear nice to the rest of the population, specifically the population deemed “rich” or “noble”.

I was neither.

I have never been “rich” or “noble” or any derivative thereof. “Rich” and “noble” were two words belonging to an entirely different world, a world I could only dream of exploring—and dream I did.

“Rich” and “noble” were not words meant for me. They had never been directed at me, except when the people who had befriended me out of pity had said, thinking I was out of earshot, “Renatus is far from rich and noble. Not a single one of them knows him. Why are we caring enough to know him?” I had known the reply, though I had never stayed long enough to hear it. 

Since then, I have not heard a single person say my name. Not even myself, because, well, I don’t talk to myself. I find it stupid and a waste of time—well, I found it a waste of time, before I began to waste my time 24 by 7 on my anxiety. Now, the thought of talking to myself in third person did even occur to me, and if it did, the idea was about as appealing as cleaning a floor full of cracked rotten eggs.

It hurt. The words people once directed at me. The absence of any voice besides my own. It hurt more than anyone will ever know, because I did not show my hurt. Not that I had anyone to show it to now, anyway. But I had never shown my hurt. For me, hurt came in the form of a well-disguised smile and an unreadable gaze. But now, I never let my heart go unguarded. There were always shields around it, blocking any hurt. There was the interior shield inside me, and the exterior one—the walls of my house that I rarely left nowadays.

I’ll tell you this. I haven’t set foot outside of my property in two weeks, and yet I am confident in saying that no one ever cared enough to notice my absence. If no one cared, why should I? At this point, I was simply a human, a human among so many uncaring humans that had better things to do than help a problematic person like me. I was alone—until I joined my family.

So why hadn’t I already? Now, it seemed like the better option. In my early days, I used to cast yearning looks out the window into the clear blue sky and lush, inviting greenery. I used to check the mail once every week like an ordinary person.

That’s when I began to realize I wasn’t ordinary. Besides the occasional commercial magazine, I never got anything. I watched enviously as my neighbors struggled to take out heaps of envelopes from their respective mailboxes. That also hurt. Knowing everyone around me had more people supporting them than I had ever had in my life. Knowing even their dogs had more supporters than all of mine added together.

I had only had three supporters in my life.

My mother, my father, and my sister. They had been so kind and so loving to me. I could never forget it. I hardly remembered my father, who had lost his life in battle when I was eight. My mother and sister passed away from injuries they had gotten from a car crash. I had cursed that day, more than I ever had. I had also broken my personal record of crying.

Was it not fair to join them as soon as I could, instead of having them watch me with tears in their eyes? Instead of having them wait so long for me to come, too?

What if they didn’t want me? What if they didn’t want my darkness among their love? What if they had simply pitied me, too, and that is why they had loved me?

Love was never fake, though. Love was one of the most true things one could ever experience. My tension easing very slightly, I let out another small sigh, spinning halfheartedly in my chair. Almost wishing I could spin so hard I could knock myself out and magically dream about all the answers to my life.

If only life were that simple.

If I was being honest, I simply wanted to join my family to satisfy my own selfish needs. I knew that. But if I was thinking from their perspective... maybe they didn’t want me burdening their lives. Maybe they had just wished for time without me, and had gotten it. If that was the truth, rejoining them would be terribly disappointing for them, and it would hurt too much to bear for me.

I didn’t want my heart to throb so badly. Nor did I want to see their expressions when they saw me—if they saw me.

And deep down, I knew the reason behind my internal conflict.

Fear.

Fear drove everything, especially for me. Fear was the cause of so many of my problems. Almost all of them, actually.

Fear was terrifying. Fear was calming. Fear was happiness and sadness and everything in between and it was growing inside me like a flame gradually becoming a fire and enveloping every inch of me that it could reach and reach further and further and further... Until fear was everything.

In reality, fear was not everything. Courage meant the absence of fear, and I did not have courage, so I was filled with fear.

I turned my head up to stare at the ceiling. Life was too scary. Death was too uncertain. Why did everything just seem to revolve around two things? Why wasn’t there another thing, a sort of in between that could release one of all their pains? Why didn’t anything, anything in this world have an answer worthy of a problem? Why wasn’t there a proper solution to the conflicts of human nature? If humans were so smart and had evolved so much over thousands of years, why had no one figured out the answer to one’s internal feelings? Inspirational quotes were, in the end, simply words. They could only be capable of so much.

The familiar whistle of wind cut through my thoughts, followed by the cracking of branches against the house.

Or at least... I thought it was the cracking of branches. As I listened closer, something sounded off. It sounded more like there were branches snapping against the front door than against the outer walls of the house.

There was one problem with that: There were no trees, or plants, anywhere near the front door.

Slowly, not daring to believe anything until my gaze found the source of the noise, I headed over to the door and opened it.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Winter’s brittle winds stung my skin and sent shivers up my body, but I did not see a single thing that was out of place.

But then my gaze dropped to a small, green leaf on the dirtied doormat that hadn’t been used in so long that it was now coated in a thick blanket of dust. A bright, fresh green leaf. In the middle of one of the harshest, coldest winters.

Curiously, I picked up the leaf, taking my time. The cold didn’t feel too bad. The cold and shivering only gave me a sense of life. And the sense of life gave me a feeling that almost seemed like... relief.

Today was a very odd day indeed. I could feel it in me. But odd in what way? I couldn’t know before the change hit me like a hurricane suddenly wiping out an entire city.

The leaf was like yet another leaf, but very unusual—after all, there were never leaves so fresh green in color during such a colorless, bitter winter.

I turned it over, and was about to let go when something caught my eye. Writing. Faint writing scrawled on the leaf as though the person who had written it had been in a hurry.

I stared at the writing as it began to find meaning in my head. Then begin. I blinked. And I let go. If my eyes were going to betray me just like everyone else on this earth had, then so be it. I wasn’t going to let myself be tricked. Not again. 

I let the leaf go, and the wind caught it. I watched it being carried far, far away, where it descended carefully and delicately on the abandoned street, before I slammed the door in the face of winter and retreated back into my small, dark house. It was a wonder I had never felt claustrophobic in this place. It was my home, my guard, my shield against the bitterness of the outside world, almost constantly sheltering me. It used to feel like the walls were closing in on me. Now, I couldn’t care less.

I took a seat at the end of my bed, pondering life, something I did very often. I laid down, and my head found the edge of a book. I picked the book up.

It had a picture of a green leaf on it, the same shape, same color, and same size as the one that had been at the door.

I groaned, closing my eyes.

At this rate, that thing was going to haunt me for the rest of my life... However long that was.

The next day, I woke up to pounding on my door. It was so new that I merely assumed that it was a part of my dreams—a sign that I had been woken from deep sleep, because I didn’t have dreams. Unless they were nightmares. I remembered nightmares, though, and I could confidently say I had not had any that night.

When I realized the pounding wasn’t a part of my dream, I leapt to my feet and hurried to the door, not daring to guess what may be waiting.

I opened the door—and once again, there was nothing.

This time, my eyes quickly dropped. Sure enough, there it was, lying innocently on my dust-covered doormat: The leaf.

I made a growling sound at the back of my throat. It felt very good to make noise, since I so hardly did anymore, but that was definitely not what I was focusing on at that moment.

The writing side of the leaf was turned up, and it read, Begin again. Different writing from yesterday, I observed.... before shutting the door. I was fed up with leaves now, if I was being honest. I did not need to be haunted by them for the rest of my life.

Besides, why was it even affecting me so much?

Oh, who was I fooling. I knew why it was affecting me so much. One: Leaves did not make pounding sounds, nor did anything else in nature. Not like what I’d heard. Two: The writing. How had it been changed? Unless it was a different leaf... And if it was someone wanting me to read it, and leaving it at my door on purpose... Who wouldn’t think it a waste of time to leave something on my doorstep?

The day after passed without any leaves, which I was thankful for. But then the same incident repeated at night, the moment I had gotten all comfortable in bed.

Let me get this straight: life was never comfortable. Relatively, however, the bed was. Anyway, this time I did not force myself out of bed for a long time, long after the pounding had ceased. But finally, curiosity won over me, a feeling I had not experienced in a very long time.

I checked the door. Saw the leaf.

This time: Begin now.

All of them had to do with beginning. What did it mean? It aggravated me far too much for my mind to let go of. Then begin. Begin again. Begin now.

The night after, I lay in bed, eyes closed, my mind far from relaxed. I was tense, half anticipating the pounding at the door, but that never came. At least, not that night. So I let the thought of the leaf go. I could not—would not—let a mere leaf bother me so much. It was ridiculous, preposterous, far-fetched, and beyond.

So I let my thoughts drift to life once more, and finally, thinking about thoughts so terrifying but familiar, I fell to sleep at last.

I woke up screaming. Literally. This had never happened to me in my life before, but I was actually screaming—silently. My mouth was open, and when my eyes flew open, when I threw off my covers, when I took hold of myself, I realized my heart was racing at twice its normal speed, a speed I found to be rather... unhealthy.

I remember why I had. My family was dead. I’d had a nightmare. About me being alone. About my family dying before my very eyes, and I had nothing to do about it. I always remember nightmares. Always the bad things that stuck to me.

Then begin.

And suddenly, the cryptic message that had somehow been engraved in my mind made so much sense. Too much sense.

And so, for the first time in years, I smiled.

A month later, a lifetime of a difference.

The sun shone in the sky, ever bright.

“Renatus, dear boy, what did you do?” demanded the farmer, irritated.

What did I do? 

I let go.

To the farmer, I smiled in response.