The Hope That Resides In The Dark.

   Hello to the freaks and the forgotten. I used to think that I carried a burden that most people couldn’t even dream of. But, as I’ve gotten older and I’ve gotten to know more about people, I’ve come to realize that we all carry some burden that we think is the worst experience in our lives. Some hide it, some face it, and some can’t handle it in a healthy way. Some can laugh even though it’s there, others find it hard to think of anything else.

   Don’t get me wrong, even though I am one who find it hard to truly smile, or laugh, and I hide it all behind a mask, I’m not all dark and depressing. I can still see the beauty in things. I can still see the green hiding in a dead tree and the flowers that barely survive beside the highway, and I still see how beautiful those little things are and I can still understand why they’re so important. But, I also see dark alley ways, broken people, and smoke that make it hard to breath. I can still see those dark and painful things, but I can see the light and hopeful things that hide in plain sight but go unnoticed.

   Much like people, these small unnoticed things, represent something big. There are people in everyday life that go unnoticed and unheard. There are people in this world who are barely hanging on to the few things that they have. There are a lot of great things that get overlooked and those things grow worse, like a flower in full bloom sticking out of a crack in the sidewalk. No one ever stops to admire the small flowers strength for surviving in such a harsh place, and as the small flower gets trampled, it dies and begins to wilt. No one ever appreciated that flower, so it was overtaken by nature. It was never seen as the strong, beautiful flower that it was, it was always walked on, or ignored. It became the wilted, and dead weed that people always thought that it was, when once it wasn’t.

   When I was young, and I looked at the world, I didn’t see monsters or bullies, I saw hope and love and all that. But, as I got older, the world became darker. My hope died, my heart broke. I saw nothing but hatred and fighting. The hope and that I once saw was gone, and it was covered up by darkness and sadness. I saw nothing more than my fears and my pain. When I looked at people, I saw myself getting hurt or I saw them getting hurt. I shut down, building walls and hiding behind them, never taking a second long look at the world, and when I did, I just saw the exact same thing and hid behind my walls again.

   Recently, I took another look. This time, searching for something. I didn’t know what I was searching for, but I was searching all the same. I don’t know exactly what I saw, but I know that it was beautiful, but dark at the same time. I broke down my walls for a while and opened up to a few people, the ones who I didn’t push away. But, after a while of being out of my walls, I came to realize that the darkness that I was hiding from, was still there. So, I built my walls again. But, this time I wasn’t going to hide. This time, I was looking over the top of the wall, still seeing the beauty in the world around me but hiding the things that I wanted to burry. Inside of the walls are dark and lonely, but outside was something great, and I stand in the walls but seeing the outside.

   But, throughout the entirety of that time period, I didn’t have friends or anyone to talk to. So, I never had much experience with people being nice to me or emotions that weren’t sad or painful. I was kept in the dark for a long time. So, now that I’m no longer hiding, I’m learning things about people and emotions, and it’s strange. I thought that all people were dark and dangerous but, I have come to find that some are kind and smart, some are funny and nice. I guess that I judged people too quickly and based that judgement on the only people that I had ever really knew, my bullies. That image was wrong in so many ways.

   The way that I see it, the world is full of pain and heart ache but its also full of little things that can make anyone smile. Even though sometimes you can’t see the beauty hidden in the pain, or the hope hidden in the darkness, it is still there you just have to look for it. It’s hard to see it now but you’ll see it eventually. It’s almost like a game of “I Spy” at first you don’t see it, you search and you search, but you don’t see it, and then when you search just a little bit more, you find it and when you find it the search is over but the game still continues.

   Though we part our ways now, we will meet again on the trail that we all follow. Lost in the depths of this cruel world, this is Pheonix Slade, walking The Trail Of The Broken.