I was born nine years ago. I lived another life before that, but nine years ago, I became something more and something different altogether. It was no grand occasion, no event at all. I just know it, looking back, that my current life started around that time. When I was thirteen.

In the beginning, I felt good. I quickly learnt to know my new life, and I was joyous about myself. But I wasn’t alone. I was a symbiot. Not with anyone else, but with myself. I was one, but I was different and new, hosted in the old and slow. I had come from elsewhere, but I had been here a long time already.

It was the old life that made me possible. I wasn’t aware that it also impeded me from being myself. I gradually realized the truth of this, and it made me sad. Ever since, I have lost several hopes, dreams and feelings to that sadness. Disillusionment, some would say. That was one of the things I was taught to believe.

Oh, there were promises. Promises of relief from the sadness. That is the only reason I sold off my illusions. Stop believing, and then do things this way, think that way and feel this, and everything will be okay.

And it really does work, it’s not that.

It’s the cost: forsaking the new life. Problems really do go away when you ignore them, as long as you never look back. But that’s what I’m doing now. I understand now, what the true illusions are. I didn’t sell them. I bought them. I bought into The Real World™, and I moved into the emptiness. It was all that existed. I had never really existed in the first place.

But I do. I do exist! The past years, I have gradually fallen asleep. Answering to the expectations all around me, I have focused on shaping the old, dead life — the holy Machine, my body and mind — into something they like better. Since nobody would respect that I was actually alive, I forgot that I was. I thought the new life — my eternal soul — had died. I sought to claim somebody else’s soul to be my own.

Now, I don’t think it can die. Now, I am disillusioned. Now I know what I am, not based on what others say I can be. I simply know it. I find I can finally believe this. I am my own master, my own friend, my own self, and I alone can decide what I believe.

So say what you want, but I don’t come from this world. I don’t know why I’m here, but since I am, I’ll try and try again to do the best out of it. Knowing what I am, and only that, has opened up the channel of feelings, the bond between the lives, that is my love and life force. I am, at last, a little more whole.

Some things, we do have in common. Rough shapes and rough details of your self, others can pick up. Throughout our lives, we communicate. It is just that sometimes, it doesn’t feel good enough. And that is what gives you access to the feeling. And the feeling can be so strong and clear, it is as if the things we have in common, are but contrivances. That the significant bits lie elsewhere. That what makes you exist, is the very bond between your mind and soul. And nobody else can feel that. Nobody can feel that you truly exist the way you do.

Sleep is invoked to douse the loneliness. In sleep, you don’t know there’s something more to yourself than what others see. You feel understood and complete, and content. I do this and I find I gradually forget what I am. In time, only a select few moments tell me otherwise. This is one of those. Now, I know. Now, I care. Later today, I might have forgotten myself again.

I wish to be awake, always. That is why I care about art. That is why I must write stories. To make sure I remember, that I am sometimes awake and aware. To feel life that is actually my own flowing through my veins. Before I come entirely undone.

“Are you saying love and evil are made of the same elements?” “With a palette, you can make any painting. By itself the palette is not art. It is the configuration of colors that makes all the difference. I am saying you have to choose what you believe in, because nobody can tell you what is right and wrong. That is the depth of your free will, and the concept of faith.” “What does faith have to do with any of this?” “Faith is to dare to acknowledge that you believe in something not because someone else told you to. Instead, you believe it simply because you know it is true. Only such a belief can be worth fighting for.”

In the year that was, I succeeded in getting better acquainted with my soul. I shall uphold that bond, but this year, I will try to access my heart, too. Too long have I hidden it, shrouded it and unsuccessfully tried to shield it from the outside world. This year, I shall muster up courage and faith and face my fears and anxieties. Somehow I believe those come from the heart, whom I have so mistreated.

It is also time for me to shake off some more apathy. These past years by myself have faced me with many challenges and new situations, many of whom I have avoided altogether. Now I am more experienced, and I can apply my abilities of problem solving to set things right. I’ll build, I’ll fix, and I’ll create my own life. I will take responsibility for myself. I’d be a joke for a man if I could never muster the wits to see this necessity.

And in the midst of all this, I want to do creative works. I have already begun to brainstorm, with snippets of music, writings and photography. The idiocy of my neglecting side would have me sit and whine while these abilities rust.

In short, I will recover all the lost and more.

I have one emotion that I hold in high regard as the one I bring with me into this new year. It is an emotion I have not felt in a long time, which I now feel in a rather peculiar and, you might say, imaginary fashion. It is a feeling of being in love, but it stems from music and from a most fictitious story. I am merely observing this emotion.

So. A track for the newborn year: Rebecca Kneubuhl – Guide You Home

Still, I have often contemplated on having missed out on several years of my life. Years I could’ve learned what all the others did, years I could’ve understood them and the world better. Instead of being alone in my room, I could’ve been in the company of good friends, doing something we all liked doing together. And in the presence of these good friends, I could’ve grown more as a human being.

But no. Since humans were so clearly different from what I knew in myself, I didn’t want to be like them. I wanted to be other things. Like a dragon, or a unicorn. That was what I dreamed of growing up and becoming: a being of integrity, purity, and great ideals. Something I could not see in humans.

A misplaced child, hidden from the variety that is human nature. With my dragons and my dreams, I survived — no, I flourished. Imagination was my realm, seperate from reality.

As time passed, the very ideals I believed in made me certain that I shouldn’t keep on believing most in what is removed from the world. They also made me believe that the world of humans can contain things that might challenge even my love for this pure imagination. So a transition began.

Things have since changed. I have faced challenges, and hinders. Delving into the uncertainty of life can taint you, mislead you, and it can even kill you. Sometimes you want to give up, and believe that what you thought to be true, really wasn’t.

There are many ways to imagine the world. Cynicism is the lousiest of them all.

Now, I take a minute to look back. Where was I heading before, where am I heading now, and what is really the wisest? Some time ago, I wanted to become a dragon. Lately, I have tried becoming more human.

Do the two really conflict?

I used to think humans were limited and weak. Now, I have come to see what potential really lies in us. All we can see and feel is a part of us. If we feel great things, then great things can be in our life.

The way I see it, I have three choices. Either I can live with the happiness of imagination and the anguish of its lack in the physical world; or I can forget and suppress the imagination and try and see the physical world as more bright; or… I can see the imagination as my palette and the physical world as my canvas, transporting the inspiration of imagination, and letting magic into the mundane realm.

That is my dream. That, and the ability to fly, of course.

A little valley, a sink in the landscape. A tree on a tiny hill. Nature around me, teeming. A clucking stream bending around the hill.

I lift my arms, take it all in. Hanging from a branch in the tree. Effortlessly. Nature is coming. Animals approach. A deer, many birds.

A fox. I understand. I follow her.

The stream is bigger here. A waterfall. She jumps over, I follow. It’s ridiculously easy.

Up a hill, leading to another waterfall above. I practically float up the hill. There is an opening behind the waterfall. We go in.

There is light behind the water. It opens into another valley, more beautiful than the previous one. I see a crooked tree on the top of a hill that’s arranged in great steps.

She speaks. “Follow my lead.” Now we’re in the grass on a hill close by. “Break free of bonds… of limitations.”

We lay down in the grass. She curls up by my left hand. Friendship. Presence. Calm. Then she crawls up to my neck and curls up there. Intimacy. Support. Empathy. At last, the settles down atop my heart. Understanding. Protection. Attachment.

“Of course I know.” She accepts me and guards me. She is, after all, a part of me.

For a short while, we lie like this. Not too short, but not too long. She stands up and walks away. I can manage, now. The sky, once blue, has filled with stars. She runs towards them and grows wings. In flight, she turns to me. “See you around.” She disappears in the night, but not before she has made the trees bloom all around me. A beautiful, protecting sight against the dark sky. I am content, and I lie there for a while longer.

Then I’m outside. I find the little valley and the tree. I sit down on a branch and listen to nature. Thinking about her. And then, as if she’d always been there, she appears in the corner of my arm. Calm.

Here I end the meditation session.

And I would stop all I do wrong: all I am expected to do, but that I deep down know I shouldn’t. All for the sake of comfort, I risk resignation, I risk forgetting, I risk dying in life. I would stop it, and I would travel. To rediscover the forsaken, remember the forgotten. I would travel to visit my soul.

Not to find a path. Just to walk.

The past holds all of our dearest memories. But beware of forgetting yourself. This post is about finding the courage to stand on your own feet, as the result of your past, instead of looking to it as all that is good and gone.

For many years, perhaps since my birth and until some years ago, I had a very grim outlook on change. Change means an ending of something you’ve been a part of. Change means letting go of something old and heading into an uncertain and scary future. And if you look into it the wrong way, like I was good at, change is melancholy. However small a change, change is death itself. Change means that the world and life gradually parts from you, and leaves you alone.

That detachment doesn’t hurt just superficially, it lashes out to your very soul. It is a pure form of loneliness, and it has a beauty, as most emotions do. In reasonable quanta, it’s an important part of life. It should be accessed sometimes, I think, for the same reason that we need to preserve machinery. But loneliness is a brittle bridge over chasms, and shouldn’t be taken lightly or made a habit out of.

It is some years past, now, that I started having a more positive outlook on change. That is because the world started acting friendly to me again, and I became more independent and self-confident. Because as a first, the world didn’t just race past. Some bits stayed with me, and evolved with me. Before, there was mostly just me, and old, ended stories I’d been fond of — by this, I mean video games and books; now, there were also friends, and stories I shared with them. Instead of being a lone figure in a raging river, there was now more of a structure.

But despite that, or perhaps because of it, I kept a fondness of the past. I’ve kept records of so many things (digital files, for the most part). After all, what is there to fear of the future when the past is always there to relive? Confronted with the thought of deleting such records, I’ve relived the sensation of change.

I now realize what’s been going on. What the loneliness really is, and why. It is insecurity. It is the fear that, in absence of your surroundings, there’s nothing left that is yourself. It is the subconscious belief that the past is all that lets you tackle your future, that there is no constant you with any worth of its own. It is the anxiety that nothing is certain, that everything you hold dear might, at any time, disappear, completely without reason. It is the lack of hope and of faith; in the world, and in yourself.

Overcoming such insecurity has several stages. You can gain control of change, and gain confidence of your control. But though it might help you further on, that control doesn’t really change things. If your fingers slip, and records vanish, is the past really gone? Will it leave you anyway, despite all your effort? The truth, the way I see it, is that the past is always gone.

We’re forever stuck between the past and the future. You are a part of the world, and some parts of you will stream by seamlessly. They will linger in the present, where you forever stand, in virtually no time at all, before they’re gone and away into nothingness.

But the trick is, I believe, to see the present for what it really is. See yourself for what you really are. There is something constant in us. In the previous paragraph, I presented the past, the present and the future as sections of a timeline. There, the present is but a point. But it is just a model. Another one can be, for example, a bird flying in the rain. Rain pours on the bird. This is the future. It trickles down the bird’s feathers and falls further down, away from the bird. The past. In this new model, the passing of time is just generic drops of water, whilst the bird is something way more concrete. The bird is the present. Or you. Whichever one you please.

What I’m trying to relate, is not just the importance of confidence, but the (abstract and alternative) understanding of it. The confidence I’m describing, is the realization that there is always something resisting the flow of time. For once, you have what some might call a soul, which stands outside all time and guides you. Its shadow in this world, on the present, lies beneath the conglomerate of transitions, beneath your dropping feathers, and it will not leave you. It does not grow and change like the rest. All it does throughout your life, is to get to know the rest of you better. If your conscious self allows that, of course.

Through this perspective, I find myself becoming able to let go of the past, to let go of the control. The subconscious fears it because it thinks letting go lessens what you are, but the opposite is fact. The past has made an impression on the present, and the present shapes the future. All time is thus encompassed within that singular point in time, and it’s all you need.

This note in other words: today, I went through my things and threw away a lot of old stuff. It felt good.

Drastic events and changes have befallen me since I last put some work into making an entry. But all in all I am still the same, possibly even more so, and I am now of a better and more purposeful design.

On my adventure I saw things that I thought could lie ahead of me. I sought and longed for these things, these myriads of premonitions and daydreams. But I was mistaken as to where the paths to them lay, and who they involved. What I saw exists further on through time, but I still do not know in which direction.

Actually, the dreams did not start alongside this adventure. For they were and are just that; dreams. Like all people have, like we all strive for. For years and years they’ve whispered to me hope and promises of especially happy days and moments, and for years I’ve never known how to reach them. I haven’t even always believed I ever could reach them. Tired of this state of being out of reach of my own dreams and desires, I jumped on a passing train that felt very right. Here, the dreams thrived and multiplied, and I felt my path was set. But the train brought me into unknown lands, lands where my power waned, where the columns supporting me — columns I have built and maintained — would erode and leave me helpless. And they did, for a while, and I let them. I wanted to see where the train went.

And not until then did I start noticing that the train was racing dangerously fast. I spoke up and enquired as to what was going on. Turns out things were not at all as I’d have hoped for. The train wasn’t planning to go anywhere at all, it couldn’t stop because its machinery was broken beyond my repair, and as for its heading, it was going straight through lands where my powers are useless.

But I was not shocked, because I had come to foresee it. I had just been naive and blind so far, and these lands were no lands of naivety and childplay. Though lingering a short moment in hope that things would magically work out, this proved dangerous for both my soul and my heart, and I eventually realized I had never had any business on that train. Determination dawning on me, I soared out and toward the sky with all my forgotten might. Only to find out that by staying so long I had become attached to the vehicle with an elastic string. The bond was not strong enough to bring me back, but it snapped and rebound on me. The impact threatened to break me, to the point that I found myself having to form an alliance within myself.

For years now I’ve been divided. When I observed my own being and saw it, I further defined myself that way. Many of my sides, characteristics and ideals I’ve centered on mythological beings. Officially it’s because it makes me able to aspire and set goals higher than if I were to have human role models. Humans are always good and evil in one, whereas a dragon and a unicorn can be pure, unmoveable, undefeatable, per definition! — they will never falter. Personally, it’s because I just feel there’s more than just this world we know. If not, then why can we imagine more, and why do we contain feelings that this world never will or can satisfy in itself?
So in short, I have the soul of a dragon, and the heart of a unicorn, in the body of a human. That’s the way it’s been. But the dragon has ruled, and the unicorn has been suppressed. That way I stayed happy and serene, though my feelings were limited and hard to keep. However, since the dragon isn’t all of me, that isn’t the right way of things. Trusting literature and passed-on knowledge, I’ve tried to ease my reign over my own heart, letting it breathe now and then. But I never trusted it.

I’ll do the symbolical version. During this recent adventure of mine, the dragon was badly injured. He flew into unknown lands and hit an invisible wall. In that weakened state, he could not endure the impact upon leaving the train. And after a series of small, curious revelations, the dragon acknowledged the unicorn, who gave his heart to the dragon, joining them in one being with a common will.

So there it is. I’ve made peace with myself. Furthermore, some of my attitudes have changed. Before jumping on that train, I never thought such an act was possible for me to do successfully. But during the ride I spent a lot of time thinking, and learning from it. I now feel more confident about my dealings in this world, and I feel more human.

And the journey continues.