The Original Intent Pt. 1

I look out over my apartment balcony in Colorado. Small snowflakes dash over and under. Forming dense and vague patterns with the approaching storm. Air and ground alike—fade into a white blanket. Consuming and eating the landscape.

In the Northeast United States, snowstorms come every winter. We refer to them as a Nor’easter. Humidity clutches the snowflakes — mixing fat and heavy slush concoctions—quite a nuisance during snow removal. When night approaches, a deep freeze takes the landscape hostage—all that chaotic movement, now solidified into a temporary water stone. Animal and trees alike expire—Mother Nature’s natural assassin.

In Colorado, I open my patio door. The wind contacts my skin, and I hear it whispering to me. There is a contrasting beauty to nature’s chaos.

A year ago, I left New Hampshire. What purpose? To narrow my group of friends. Quality over quantity. That still doesn’t answer the question, though.

Why did I come out here?

When I look out my window, I feel peace. Nothing exists other than this moment right here. I accept all my mistakes and hold back nothing. In the consolidation between chaos and quiet, this is where I am at my best.

I don’t know how to talk about the past. On numerous occasions, I’ve attempted a strategy to try and conjure up some way to explain it all. I sit staring at a blank screen, internalizing. Explaining my past through metaphor and idiosyncratic memory—hours and hours of self-guided meditation and the restructuring of a fractured moral consciousness. Every time, I fail.

Courage has its grips on me again. I’d rather chase the path of least resistance and remain quiet. Live in a mountain town. Explore the ends of the Earth. Adopt a trade or work a job that makes sense. Prevention and distraction become allies.

I’ve never explored the idea of forgiving myself. Not up until this moment.

“Thank you for your service,” I hear. I close my eyes, pretending to detach. What words these are. This talk is malice. Tormentful. The words possess benevolent intention, met with consternation and panic. Benevolence smelters into guilt. Discharging drilled memories as if right in front of me.

I hear more than words.

“Raise your right hand. Repeat after me.”

Oaths and words are as empty as air at 30,000 feet.

The words take me back to a place I’d rather forget.

“You’re the first I’m recruiting.”

A man utters quotes and lines about honor and duty.

I never raved around the power or liberty on the happening experience of freedom. The independence and autonomy to make my own decisions. What scares me the most is that I never once blinked at the weight of my decision. Here I am, under my own free will.

The only real freedom was to relinquish it.

“I’ll take infantry.”