I seem to have taken the path less travelled, but maybe I’ve made the wrong choice? Against all cliche, should I have followed the crowd on the path of pleasure and conformity?

Should I aspire, attain, and become the kind of person who matches the visible and well-celebrated standards of success for someone approximating myself?

Or should I continue along the uncommon road?

Same choice, different stage of the spiral.

Once again, for the thousandth time, I’m writing these words and doubting if I should shield my dreams from the flickering flames of the well-trodden path to pursue the inner light instead.

I sense the power of inner illumination: the light which refuses to ignite for the ignorant traveller; which refuses to grant even one degree of warmth for the man who extinguishes himself between his cracked and confused convictions.

Right now, this month, I find myself at a familiar fork in the road: on my left is a softly ascending gravel path, a petalled pavement, lanterns and candles guiding my eyes like lights on a runway, and they whisper towards the party on the horizon.

I see their smiles, and I feel their laughter; the crowd is beautiful, it’s a gathering of the passionate and the successful; some work, much novelty, but I can’t shake the feeling that this is wrong.

I hear the celebration, and I feel the sincerity of their joy, but their song is not my song - it’s not the song of my soul.

Their words feel alien to my ears.

Back upon the fork, and I’m looking towards my right-hand side: it’s dimmer, darker, and I see a softly descending road with no candles or lanterns marking the boundaries: no welcome at the entrance, no songs, no expectations, no crowds of pleasure or celebration, nothing but a stroll through solitude unto itself.

On the neglected right-hand path, brambles and branches arch overhead in a crypt-like canopy, and I sense a light further along the way: a great and graceful illumination awaiting somewhere ahead, and it anticipates my embrace like the feeling of family reunited.

But I doubt my sight, and I doubt my heart.

Because the truth is that I don’t yet know the lightness of my light, and I’ve never known the fullness of a family which felt like home.

Standing at the fork in the path, I feel myself fragment into a hundred parts. Like a legion of ghostly apparitions, or some sort of convoy of caricatures from the depth and breadth of my psychological interior, I experience the enormity of possibility while my soul scatters against the confusion of my inconsistencies.

I watch the outlines of my inner selves as they advance at every age, from every angle, from the highest of intentions, and the lowest of gratifications, and I feel strangely uprooted from my ordinary sense of rootedness.

I’m staring down the fork of my conflicted future.

Some of me skips towards the left, some of my naivety, some of my weakness, I skip towards the party and I celebrate the sad and wretched sound of responsibility shattering against the rocks, but my majority tilts rightward.

The largest parts of me, the most significant and sincere aspects of who I know myself to be, they take the right-hand path in a solemn stack and they gather themselves into a procession - is it a noble expedition or a funeral march - I don’t know, but I appear to have descended onto the path less travelled, and I cannot pause to consider the parts I’ve left behind.

Spiritually detached or traumatically dissociated, I think I’m somewhere in the middle: both the audience and participant - my life unfolds like a parchment stretched across the soil of my soul.

The fork in the road...

These words, my confession: I write myself into existence at the furthest tips of my fingers with no more sense of direction than the flat of my hand weighing heavy against my forehead.

Jordan