AGING AND THE ARTS

AGING AND THE ARTS

AGING AND THE ARTS When I was 13, I went for a walk, not for the first time and not for the last time, but still different all together. Looking back now, it was the day that I saved my life, it was the day I became a sole survivor. I wasn't walking to clear my thoughts but I was walking away, away from the person I had become. I walked and I talked, to no one in particular, just to myself. Without an audience, without a judgmental ear, I talked. I have spent 13 years walking and 13 years talking, but yet still in 19 years no one has listened and I have never reached a destination.

Tomorrow will be different. I say "will" to myself with an assurance that it has to be different. When I look back on life I don't laugh and I don't cry, I think. What in the hell have I done to myself? In 13 years the biggest struggle I am yet to overcome is surviving me. It sounds so imaginary and yet so real at the same time. I am my own biggest adversary, because I have been responsible for my own destruction and my own savior all at the same time. As I walk on this night, people stare and look at a girl destroyed, reduced to a walk leaving insanity and searching for sanity. I start to talk again, holding not a conversation but a monologue with myself.

I was raised to lose. The game was set up so that I couldn't win. I played for keeps and yet lost it all. Reflecting back on the dark shadow that towered over me in disapproval, I see my own imminent failure. The shadows were never satisfied. As a child I tried so hard to be all that they wanted and yet failed every time. In some kind of effort to reach impossible standards I took control of the only thing I had any control of, myself. I tortured to be something everyone could love. I never strived to be something I could love. Eventually as I learned to hate myself because they always did, I started to pave a path for destruction. Misery loves company, and the misery I felt radiated off me towards the whole world. How could anyone love me if I didn't love myself? How did I deserve their love? Your presence looks at me and you shake your head. I continue to walk. The dark shadows now are everywhere. I walk for a while in silence, trying to return to the story with an ease that would satisfy my audience amongst the trees. Another tear streams to the ground.

In the slow decay that had now taken over my whole body, I found you. You became the only security I had ever known. I didn't believe I saw you, I thought you were only my ...