Transiting

Max Brandson

Ignorant to the world, I was wanting. Ignorant of emotion, I was

soft. Ignorant to the yelling, I was silent. Mine was a life begot
with strain, masqueraded with false joy, and wrought with
hopeless hope. Because I was hoping for the better, hoping for
togetherness, hoping for simplicity,
I made no actions, sitting as still as hope for a
my stued dog. I was as soft as it, better future, a
able to be pushed over the sparkling eye
emotional edge with a gust of wind,
from behind the
yet, even in the darkest of these
dark shroud, a
days, I called not for cessation, but
for Mommy. Mommy, that rst
gold-white glow
word of yearning, was a feeling that at the end of
would continue to haunt my the tunnel.
childhood; however, during the
times that I was not swaddled in my
own wanting, I was overall optimistic, a feeling that could only be
maintained through my innocence. Not knowing the illegitimacy
of my idols--Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, God--allowed me to
hold onto something; it allowed my imagination to be
ungrounded and soaring; it allowed me to believe that my beloved
stued animals could think and, therefore, could love me. Most of
all, believing in God allowed me to think that all my misery would
terminate eventually, and after that I could nally be happy. I had
something that I could hold onto in addition to this plush dog.
The one upside that this believe gave me was hope for a better
future, a sparkling eye from behind the dark shroud, a gold-white
glow at the end of the tunnel.
 Mais non! My life went from a
My present delicately balanced situation to one
state is that was absolutely shattered.
transitory. This Fortunately, years of heinous acts
life is not against my sensitive self heated
yet here, but and tempered my glass heart,
preventing the pieces from falling
going there.
away. In addition, my perception of
the world shattered. What I had
previously thought of as absolute cracked in my weakest hour, yet
cleared my mind of malicious falsehoods and opened it as wide as
the sky enveloped by the glow of a sunset. Within this sky lies the
setting of my past self; with this setting comes a rising-a rebirth.
As the sun set on a soft, ignorant child, the sun rose through the
night a new person who was ready to live their life as they saw t,
unable to be dictated by those forces working to betray them.
Although not fully realized, my present state is transitory. This
life is not yet here, but going there. Basking in the warm glow of
the sunrise, I bring myself happiness-happiness by way of mental
freedom, appreciation of beauty, intelligence, and knowledge.
When the time comes, however, I must move on once more to my
future for it is what hides behind the shattered one-way glass that
I stare at in hindsight, that I stare at in reminiscence. I must,
when the time comes, complete the shattering of my past, for
whilst I look back, I can never look forward. I must, when the time
comes, look through the newly formed hole in the window to the
awe of a new dawn.
Oh, this future shall by my very
nature be tied up into a neat little Only then will
bow with no ends left undone. my
Although the road there may be stubbornness
messy, tarnished, or torn, the knot
allow me to
will have been tied with the
embrace the
challenge of life having been
thoroughly completed as all of my
darkness of the
previous works had been. My grave.
unfailing tendency to complete
what I started shall without a doubt
be applied to the overarching task of living, and I will have
accomplished what I had set out to do from the very beginning of
life: discover happiness within myself by means of culture,
conversation, and camaraderie. Only by these means will I have
learned how to tie the black bow to top the gift of death, and only
by my own drive for completion will I be able to put the bow atop
it. Only then will my stubbornness allow me to embrace the
darkness of the grave; however, I cannot help thinking that until
that point, my past of unbounded ignorance and stued animal-
like softness will always be a shadow behind me, perhaps as a
reminder of just how close that part of my life is to me, but I know
that, as a dog who sits down for the last time--old, yet
appreciative--I shall with the gold of my virtue transit across the
river Styx to the Elysian elds where its magnicence will be so
bright that any shadow shall be turned to pure light in a
nal sunset.