Nature's Child

My eyes brighten, taking in the softness of a waterfall whilst I listen to the harsh sounds of it crashing into the mossy rocks which stood below. Trees are being whisked away by the flowing wind, dancing to the forest's melody. The harmony of birds and insects mixed with the whistle of the charismatic wind. Taunted by the water, I stand silently, it beckons me into its sparkling coolness. I step forward, the water splashes me in a playful nature and although I am damp, I refuse to move. This warm perfect scenery has left me frozen, unable to speak, unable to think. My familiarity with the dullness and lifelessness of living in an industrialised city is making me ache to be back in the natural world. I was born in a farmhouse in the countryside near a beautiful forest but when I turned twenty-one, I moved to a large city and started a job in management for a publishing company. I transformed from being an imaginative, explorative young boy to a respected replication of every other wealthy businessman living a false dream. I knew I was only here because someone at work had suggested I take a few days off, something I hadn't done in years. He suggested a homely cottage-like hotel, just a few hours’ drive from my city. The woman who ran this hotel saw that I was only working and suggested that I take a walk around the forest this morning. I felt bad, I said yes.

 I take my environment in, I am hit with nostalgia. The rays of sunshine breaking through the trees and hitting my skin remind me of running down the tree tunnel which entered my parent's old farmhouse. The shouts of "You can’t catch me!" from my young, effervescent self. I smiled to myself, closing my eyes. The sounds of the waterfall filled my head with the memory of bringing my first girlfriend to a spot I knew behind the forest, at the back of my house, she was always into waterfalls and nature, so I knew she'd love it. I was thirteen at the time and didn't know all that much about relationships. I just thought she was pretty, so we held hands in the hallway. Taking a deep breath in through my nose, I smelt the strong scent of moss and wood. It brought me back to when my father took me out after a storm to teach me how to cut the wood of the trees which had been knocked over, he was always so focused on teaching me the "skills needed to be a man" and I knew he was disappointed when I went into office work instead of agriculture. I was happy living in the countryside, but I was always taught that to be successful is to be isolated. So as a snake leaves its cause, home and comfort as soon as it can, I did too.

I feel the pinch of the trees and vines wrapping around my heart and tugging at it. Asking me why I had left what I loved in the name of artificial success, why I had abandoned the very environment that raised me and guided me. I felt my answer breaking through the walls of my own mental control. My eyes began to get watery. My body began to weaken. My throat began to shrink. I clenched my fists and as if I were a child missing his parents after a long day at school, I begin to cry. No, not cry. I sobbed. I sobbed for the child I had murdered by choosing head instead of heart, a child who had been tortured because the body that trapped it craved accomplishment like an addict looking for his next fix. I wished to revive that boy again, to be entertained by sticks and rocks and to let myself exist without hyper-fixating on how much more there was to be accomplished. I wish I had chosen to live my life dependent on what brought a smile onto my face instead of what others might think of the grown man who planted flowers and swam in rivers.

My tears fall into the water, and I feel the splashes on my face. Again, I can feel the water calling, beckoning, demanding. I am being invited in once again, but my thoughts of manners and standards aren't yet overpowered by the urge to feel like the carefree boy I used to be. I place my hand in the water, feeling the temperature. Perhaps considering surrendering to those intrusive thoughts I had kept caged since twenty-one. The question is whether I keep myself to this respected and powerful standard or I let myself be a boy again. I sit on the rocks, my hand still in the water. I let myself think. I decide.

 I Stand up and take off my shoes, my feet feeling the softness of the damp grass I stand on. Adrenaline pumps through every ounce of my body. I haven't felt like this for years, not since I was that carefree boy. I take a few steps back before softly bumping into a tree. It bumps me forward like a supportive friend convincing me to take that step you know I've needed to take for so long. To ask out that friend, to stand up for yourself, to choose happiness and I will. I finally will. I will choose happiness. I will choose my heart. I will choose myself. Preparing myself, I take a few breaths. I'm running - I jump. The water encloses me in its crystal bliss, I let myself rest there. I am levitating for a while before I swim up from the water. My clothes are damp and there was money in my pocket but I can feel the joy that I had deprived myself of all this time. This is my home; It always has been. I'm not a solitary serpent nor am I it's human equivalent. I am nature's child, raised by the forest.