Have you ever wished to sit and speak with someone, simply because you realise there are so, so many words that you never spoke, or perhaps words were spoken, but were never intended, or yearned to open your soul and quietly utter, Namaste? Perhaps, like me, you are labouring under the misapprehension that there could ever be an opportunity to do so.

Perhaps, like me, there is nothing to be done, nothing more than to set free an inner primal scream of loss to which is completely unequated to anything imaginable. I have climbed to mountaintops and howled my devastation to the wind and wide open spaces, clinging to the rough edges of foreign rock and yearning to release my grasp simultaneously. I have stood by the sea in vain, attempting to wash away the lingerings of guilt, shame and self condemnation. I have accepted my personal limitations and disastrous consequences of my utterly senseless decisions based on misplaced faith of professional advice, only to seize them back, each time with an addition of fresh claw marks to join the older, deeper markings from numerous previous attempts to pardon myself.

I have wandered thousands of miles across this earth. It commenced as a juvenile attempt to intentionally live a life that I felt I deserved, outside of survival mode; and foolishly believed I could recreate myself to be a spirit of substance. On this basis, my journey was doomed before it had even begun. When this had become quite apparent, it became a quest to find some emulation (no matter how small) of what was lost, and yet again, to no avail. At the end of this path, my steps have lead me to the devastating understanding that there can never be another time, another age, another person, another chance.

All the while, a vestige of shade traced each and every step I took, embodying the symbolic nature (as I understand it) of Peter Pan’s shadow. As with machinery, some parts become worn in human beings, still in working order but scarred with age, some beyond use and capability, to be cast aside as relics and memories. And similarly, there are elements that are irreplaceable. It is simply the nature of the beast. It is these irreplaceable details which were the lifeblood of my journey all along.

The pain of loss and unforgiveness, no matter on whose part, can be a gift or a lifelong sentence, it is up to the bearer of it to decide what form it will take. There are only three choices as I see it: to embrace the pain of what will never be, allowing my self-inflicted wounds to heal, and to finally somehow find acceptance; to hide away from the world, and stay in my safe place of shadows, too fearful to step out and confront the inevitable storm; or to run as far away as possible, from myself, in an attempt to deny any knowledge that this emotional baggage does actually exist. I’ve tried two out of these three possibilities, but I cannot hide from the world, nor myself, any longer. I follow me wherever I go. So, I choose to follow a new road to conceivable semi-absolution, due to a single response of three precious (to me) words, no matter in what context they were meant. I choose to begin repainting my canvas of life and accept my gift, I just haven’t found a way to untie it graciously enough to embrace it yet.