It’s surreal, watching your world burn.

I stood in the smoke billowing from the collapsing wreck of my home. Everything I had spent years building was in there.  All my work, memories, pictures and books, movies and clothes. Everything.

And I had set it on fire.

Have you ever felt like everything you’ve spent half a lifetime putting together had collapsed around you, trapping you in a hole you can only escape by leaving it all behind? Yeah, it sucks.

The worst part of it is that so much of it was good. It was the tiniest part that was a problem but I couldn’t move on with those tiny, critical parts and the rest was tied to close. Some of it just couldn’t move.  So I did the only reasonable thing I could. I set it all on fire.

Ok, maybe less than reasonable. But sometimes change requires big steps. Big steps are always hard. And I am fundamentally a creature of perpetual habit. Change is not easy or friendly. But change is what I needed. And so I made sure I couldn’t go back. 

I took a deep breath, let my gaze linger a moment more on the last of my past and then wrapped my duster closer around myself, feeling cold despite the warm summer night. I turned around and stood staring into the darkness, the light from the rising flames casting long shadows into the night before me. It seemed an ominous sign, the demons in the dark.

I smiled ruefully and took my first step away from my old home and into the uncertain dark. My heart was heavy with memories of what I was leaving, but my feet were light.

They say the first step is always the hardest. But after striking the match on my past, that next step was easy. I wonder what that says about me…