Chapter Text
Prologue - Choices and Crossroads
Our lives are essentially made up of choices and thousands of doorways that we must decide to either open or leave shut forever. Somehow the more adult you are the more decisions, no matter how small or big, shape how you live and choose to live. And that is the reason it is so terrifying, the fear of making the wrong choice.
Decision-making — it is one of the most terrifying things, which way to go, which door to open or close behind you. The action is so final, something you can never take back because the doors of the past would reveal something different, not what you expect.
What about fate, then? The choices we make are written on the canvas of the universe and unchangeable. Well, I have never been overly religious, but I do believe there is some sort of bigger force at work, on the other hand, the notion of some entity just making decisions for us, condemning or saving us is just ridiculous. You can only count on yourself, you learn this the hard way, big rosy dreams are left behind in childhood and adulting will come knocking.
I have always been one of those hopeless, hopeful fools, who think there is a way out no matter what and some sort of possibility to follow your dreams. Head in the clouds type who sees that impossible situations will not be that impossible and all you need to do is work through them. Rather, they become worthy challenges and good advancements for the future.Well, recently life has proven me wrong, tearing me from my pretty idealistic clouds and showing me, I am stuck in a small closet-sized room with no windows, only one of those awful photo wallpapers of grainy clouds decorating the walls. The room has a few old paintings depicting long-lost dreams in crackling oil paint and fading colours. My very own Room of Curiosities, if you will – like predecessors of museums were set in dusty rooms of elaborate mansions, filled with mysterious artefacts available only to the few and elite. Here I am the elite, access only for me.
I am always visiting so I could look at those paintings repeatedly and try to decipher them because I know they can’t be just paintings made of canvas and paint and brushstrokes. There must be some deeper meaning. I can almost sense a passageway beyond, behind the physical objects.
Yet, nothing ever changes, not before I make the fatal decision - either to move on and be the change or stay where I am hoping for something more.
How can one choose between many mysterious roads when the straight orderly well-travelled one leads to a safe path and a determined destination? All the while the other trail promises adventure, excitement, and an unknown amount of uncertainty in its winding curves and turns — only the fiercest and bravest have been known to weather the dangers ahead while hoping for great rewards.
Are the rewards worth it to risk discovering who you are or are you even worth the rewards if you do not?