Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 118

This week's picture prompt is by Adam Gaia - although I can't find it on his website or Instagram page, but it has been credited to him in several other locations. He has a few interesting pieces. 

This one was a no-brainer for me, and autobiographical. 

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here.

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

The True Path

It took me a long time to find the path. I’d known it was there – I mean it’s there for all of us, isn’t it? But mine was obscured by the mess of an abusive childhood, and negative toxicity.

I was led onto other paths, paths that weren’t mine, that belonged to others. I travelled down them full of hope, believing I would find my destiny, that place where I could be ultimately fulfilled, but every time it wasn’t there. It was a dead end, only continuing for those it was intended for – which was never me.

It became harder to keep searching. I became fearful I was wasting my time. Never sure of the direction, waiting for the next cul-de-sac that would turn me back to where I came from, to begin again. Each time that little bit wiser, but that little bit weaker.

You see, I didn’t know how to ascertain the right path or the side road that led me to it. I thought the answers lay outside of myself, in someone else. That’s what I’d been taught, you see: I didn’t matter, only they did and as long as I was with them I’d be alright. But that wasn’t true.

And only once crashing and burning hard on one of the wrong paths and left stuck and exhausted, did I finally start to realise what I was seeking lay within. It was then that I started to look inside, and ... well ... listen: to me, to my heart, to my feelings.

From inside the quiet voice grew louder, giving me directions. Slowly taking me off that grey, empty path and bringing me out into the open, into the light.

It lit up a path that had been there all along waiting to be found. A path that led me to the truth I’d been searching for and the fulfilment I needed. It was like discovering a whole new world, one within.