small monuments

Sometimes it seems like such a strange, hard road. Figuring yourself out, figuring the world out, how you fit into it all, where you come from and where you’re going. Learning who your parents are as real people, who they were before they knew you, deciding if they’re good or bad, if you’re going to be good or bad, and how much you want to be like them. Forming your opinions about things and trying to connect with other human beings, to form and maintain friendships against the alienation and loneliness hiding in every corner, behind every door, under every bed, to find lovers whose bodies feel like the barest breath against your startled cheek. Everything so uncertain, every step so halting. It seems like such a long journey, pushing your way up in the dark through soil to the surface to gasp for air, and then you realize there are hundreds, thousands, billions of others walking that same road at the same time, discovering the same things, making the same decisions or even different better ones, and the road was flattened by millions of feet before yours and will be trod upon by trillions following in your wake, discovering life along the paths you have made and your eyes flutter and you suddenly realize: You were never alone at all and you never will be again.