The Coin

In that moment he wished he had picked up the coin; it was a dirty penny worth nothing but he desired to pick it up. It haunted him, it stayed in his mind, and wanted to see it everywhere to blinding him to what is. It was his greatest distraction, his greatest procrastination, it was a distraction from the painful reality, this simple event that had happened, an event that could have been “controlled” but was then chosen to remain uncontrolled – therefore regret became the purgatory – a regretful thought to an empty event – why was this chosen? Because it meant nothing to him therefore it couldn’t hurt him – only he himself could provoke self-inflicted hurt by perpetuating the story of the meaningless fixation. He knew it made no difference but it was the only thing he had to distract his mind from the pure pain to which had abruptly hit him like a storm; he chose to fixate on something so pointless, so worthless, so petty, and so “penniless”, that he clung on out of fear to an empty thought stemming from old fears and projections – with no hope and no nothing, other than a distraction from the present moment because there was no control of it – this frightened his ego to death.

He took a breath and all of a sudden pain and heartache became a soul-binding vice that took him over; a pit in his gut burnt like volcanic acid. He courageously ventured into the dark purgatory and faced it all – his absolute aloneness despite his innate knowing towards never being truly alone. He faced his sadness, his heavy eyes, his sleep-induced comas that had always wished to sleep to “better” days, to different outcomes – he faced it all at the expense of his own life, his own meaning – he let himself feel in order to let himself heal. It all washed over him, drowned him, submerged him until he couldn’t breathe and throughout this he breathed and gracefully floated to the top; the dark clouds parted, the rain stopped, and the sun began to shine. His solitary pain diminished as the tides washed up his body upon the sandy shore and he then began to hysterically laugh – lying beside him was the dirty penny. He watched it slowly erode into the sand as each wave covered it more and more with the receding sand – he watched it deplete into its nothingness and deliriously grinned, turning his head and looking to the cotton-clouded blue sky.

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