Leaving it Behind
Leave it behind, leave it behind, leave it behind.
The words in her mouth as she woke up this morning, the thoughts in her dreams late last night.
Leave it behind.
She pondered the words, rolled them over in her magnificent mind, whispered them and felt their weight on her tongue, their necessity.
Leave it behind.
She leaned on the bathroom sink, her hair loose and falling around her face, the way waterfalls fall into clouds, the way songs fall from lips and live on the air. Her reflection in the mirror was just that - a reflection. A reflection of a ghost, a shadow of a person, a wraith. Cheeks hollow, face gaunt, eyes empty. Empty, it seemed, and pleading.
What do you want from me? she asked her mirror-self. What do you need?
She knew her own response, but refused to voice it as a thought. Thoughts were real, and she had never been one to tamper with reality.
Throughout her day, the words chased her. She was fast, but not fast enough. The words hunted her, pursued her. She could not shake them.
Leave it behind.
After lunch, she retreated to the library. The haven of ink and paper, the sanctuary of voices to drown out her own. She thought it would be enough, and it wasn't.
During lecture, she finally gave in. She explored the possibility. She let her mind wander, far and fast. She wandered until suddenly she could not find her way back, and she wasn't sure she wanted to.
The idea of a second chance - a chance to be happy, a chance to be free - enthralled her and exhilarated her and terrified her. She could get away, away from her money, from her family's legacy, from her fears. She could get away from the memories that haunted her heart, from the pain hanging over this city like fog, from the responsibilities that reminded her that she was the last, and the only, and the one.
She could leave it behind.
It was like the world had suddenly clicked into focus, like being blind your whole life and waking up with perfect vision.
Which, in a way, she had.
She didn't need to consider, to entertain the idea any longer. Her mind was made up, stitched together with fraying thread and bursting at the seams.
Life, she decided, was a series of infinite chances, infinite until your time ran out. She was going to take advantage of that. She was going to start anew, to live. To take her second chance, and then maybe her third, or fourth, or fifth, and so on and so on until her bones grew weary and her voice cracked and splintered. She only got to live once, and then as far as she knew there would be nothing, so she understood now that she had to fill her something with something, and she had to hope that that something would be enough.
So she got to work.
She sold her inherited fancy car, her mother's diamond rings. She sold her brother's wine collection, her father's good silverware. She emptied the house and then sold the house itself, without even a thought of goodbye to those halls where she'd played hide-and-seek among the glamour, the irony of it all. She sold her childhood (and current) home without taking with her a single item.
She erased her name from the Internet, destroyed her legal documents. She deleted all bank records, history, heritage. She dropped out from the university she'd worked all her life to be able to attend. She no longer existed, no longer wanted to.
All she had now were the clothes on her back - a leather jacket, a grey T-shirt, old jeans - and a single white envelope in her hand, nothing written on the front nor the back, and, to her, completely empty inside, without value.
She left the envelope on a bench outside her old university. She felt no longing nor connection to the place, it was merely the first place she passed by. She did not secure it against the wind with a rock, and as she walked away it blew, far, to the ocean, probably. Her new mindset did not see this as a waste, just another opportunity.
And so she began, walking along the riverside road, breathing in the wind, a smile on her face. She did not stop walking to rest, and she did not look back, for there was nothing behind her to see. She kept her gaze forward, and a smile on her face, for that was all she had, but all she needed. She was homeless but home, nonexistent but free.
She was leaving it behind.
---
The little girl approached the tree cautiously, like it was a bomb prepped to detonate. Her face was dirty, ash-covered, and her nails were full of grime. Blood dripped from a cut on her lip and tear streaks drew lines in the grey painting her hollow cheeks. She was alarmingly skinny, her bones sticking out at odd angles, her cheekbones sharp like knives. Her eyes, though sunken, glowed brilliant blue, the blue of butterflies and clear skies and freedom. They shone through her struggle.
She was merely six years old, yet the city had not been kind to her, as it had so many others. Neither had the universe, neither had the world.
She slowly pulled the paper out from between the branches, where the wind had carried it and caught it and set it down, let it be. She turned it over between her fingers, leaving smudges like pencil. She saw that it was not a paper after all, but an envelope.
The little girl opened it, out of curiosity more than anything, and saw its contents.
Inside this envelope was everything she needed, everything her family needed, and more.
She almost dropped it, but held on tight, clutching it like a lifeline, which it was. With this envelope, she could start a new life, a new story, a second chance.
She could leave it all behind.