The light is piercing, almost painful. A solid white room with the brightest sunlight I could imagine pouring in from above as though someone placed the sun directly outside the clear glass surrounds me. Painted on the walls, with invisible ink, are all the mistakes I've made in my life.
The room is so blinding that I can't find the door. I can open my eyes only with the smallest of cracks. I'd hoped that my eyes would have adjusted by now - has it been days? Months? Years? A lifetime? It definitely feels like a lifetime.
The brightness may as well be a thousand tons of weigh pressing down on me. Still, I find myself pawing at the walls in an attempt to find the door. All I feel, however, is the texture of the painted mistakes slightly raised off the walls of this deadly white.
I feel like giving up, but I'm so lost within in this room that even if I had the capability of doing so I wouldn't be able to see my way to doing it. This is why the light is so much more dangerous than the dark. At least when you're in the dark you can use a flashlight if you'd like, or just stay peacefully blissful.
Still, the textures, as uncomfortable as they feel, give me understanding. Understanding of how I got here, how I trapped myself here in this never ending cycle of blinding pressurized existence.
Strangely, though, the room is absent of heat. It is freezing, the way the air feels in the dead of winter, open field, and snow littering the landscape as though it is all that has ever existed. I, however, am not cold. It is just a feeling of brisk, frigid cold air surrounding me as these mistakes are my main companion.
I suppose that since my choices have always been that of my own, I only have myself to blame. Still, it feels like a strange sort of relief to curse something else even though it is only a momentary relief as I release that I, in fact, am still the reason I'm here.
It is better to keep my eyes closed; however, that is too simple. I have to keep them open, hoping I can see the painted mistakes and have them point me to something I've not yet seen. The cracks in my eye lids opened as little as possible, but it is still hopeless. Just white. My hands are the only vision I have.
Crawling on the floor just renders more risen painted lines, but it still feels absolutely hopeless in deciphering anything. It would be easier to give up searching. I just... can't.
Sometimes I wish I could just go back into the dark like everyone else, but if I can just survive this experience then perhaps I will have knowledge coming out the other end that surpasses what I could imagine.
Simply have to keep hope alive long enough to find out.
-Dustin S. Stover
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