pathways

I swore I would never go back.  I would never again be there in that space on that campus.  And for 7 years I keep my word to myself.  But Tuesday I loaded my book bag. I got in my car.  I drove there- just like I said I would never do.  Now I don’t hate the U, in fact I am a proud graduate but we have our differences.  Most of them our mine since it is simply an institution  I hold very few grudges but my feelings towards the mental health services on campus are slightly more than openly hostile; their polices are going to get someone killed if they haven‘t already and I am lucky they didn‘t kill me. When I got too sick to stay up with my classes I no longer qualified for help...Yes, that is the past.  And in the back of my mind I wondered what it would be like to return to the scene of the crime, the place of my complete mental breakdown following the death of my sister.  The same way I wonder about what it would be like to go to her grave.
It was a Tuesday following Labor Day that my slow descent into darkness began. The day after taking all my classes I stopped by the ME's office and picked up my sister’s autopsy results.

Ironically the day I  returned to the U, this Tuesday was also a Tuesday following Labor Day.
I parked in a lot I didn’t remember knowing but obviously knew.
I walked the long way around the buildings noticing the landscaping bark around the trees and feeling nothing of my prior chaos and confusion.  The lack of emotion did not surprise me, the feelings are old ghosts. My path took me to the wide open walk way to the east of the Marriot Library.  I followed memories I don’t remember making to the front door of the right building, found my class, and started my life over, again.
I will never be the same person as before.
I will never know what either of us might have been had life dealt her a hand she could have held without me, or without dragging us both under.
I will never know if during that time the construct of my own mind was my worse enemy or my only saving grace.
I will never know what doors I closed forever when I sank into darkness.
But.
I know where I am now.
And that is all any of us ever need.
Like layers of light at dawn each time I say I feel better or more like myself, my world gets a little brighter.
I know now I am truly back up on my feet and running under my own power.

The voices whisper dying out like sunset wind... she was my sister.