The Flight of a Traveller
She looked out at what she had created. Her year had started off with such promise and yet she felt like all she had done was change peoples lives. And not in that good ’they will go on to do great things’ way.
She had ruined a girls chance at showing off her work and told a guy that she loved him only to find out that wasn’t the case. Everyone said they would miss her and she knew they wouldn’t forget her. But within another year she knew her memory would sour in their brains and they would realize what a virus she had been.
Much like a flower that looks so pretty that you don’t want to pick it and ruin its glow she had infected them, with new ideas that they wouldn’t be able to get out of their heads. They might quit the jobs that are feeding them because she told them they were a good painter, or get a job they hate because she was worried they would starve. Who was she to be making these decisions or be giving people advice? Just because she had travelled to another country did not mean she had ‘seen the world’.
So what was she to do now? Should she continue to be a beacon of light in these peoples world and pretend like maybe this is where she belonged? Or should she pull away to reduce the risk of hurt to most involved?
She wandered how many people would herald her departure, and how many would spend the days missing her. And how long that would last? New-age fairy-tales make it seem like a guy might wait years for someone to return to their life. But that doesn’t seem accurate. After all how many people do you remember from your life 5 or even 1 year ago?
Sure technology makes it easier to keep in contact but that bond would weaken when she wasn’t there to feel their hugs or hear their pain. Their laughs won’t warm her up the same way half way across the world.
But what would become of her if she were to stay? There was really no future, she just wanted to prolong the present. But others would move on and she would feel the sting of being in a place where she knew no-one, that had felt so full once upon a time. She would be the one left behind.
No she would rather cut the ties now and see how they would come back together then see them torn away from her.
The faces of her life waved at her as she walked through her gate.
She knew it was probably the right decision. But what did she really know?