Page 10 - Cafe Volume 1 - e-magzine

10

Walking Down the Corridor

Walking down this corridor, I feel a little lost. As ashamed as I am to admit

it, I know I would only be a fool if I kept carrying on, trying desperately to find
answers in the tiny footsteps that echo across every corner. It›s strange, isn›t it,

when the place that you›ve always known like the back of your hand, now feels
like a birthmark that you cannot recognise anymore? What do you do when your

home doesn›t feel like a home anymore? I hear a sound - someone beckoning me
forward, and I cannot seem to escape the curiosity that seems to entangle me with

it. I see a door midway, and a four year old standing within, hugging her backpack,
looking for someone. She catches my eye, but she looks away quickly. She›s afraid,

I can tell. I wonder why her fear and mine lie along the same wavelengths, or why
I am so drawn to her, why I sense a need to comfort her; the gloominess of the

corridor no longer creating ripples of anxiety within me. In a hazy state, I pass the
pillars that I used to hold onto when I felt lonely and craved friends, but I don›t

stop to notice them - repressed memories are left best untouched. The footsteps
quiet down when I reach the girl, and she shies away from me. I try to look at her

a little closely, but the shadows of the unknown do me no favours. Stranded, a part
of me wants to tell her that she doesn›t have to be so scared, that I›m here for her.

She looks up at me as if she heard me, and in that vague moment of familiarity,
I realise that I›m looking at a version of myself that I had long forgotten. In this

corridor I had shed tears, and in this corridor I had been afraid. Almost as if an
epiphany had hit me, I smile down at her, and think: maybe the person I was

looking for back then was myself all along, and maybe amidst everything, I learnt
to become my own solace.