Two years. It has been two years since I last stood on this spot and looked out across this view. Since I breathed in this air, and felt this earth under my feet.
A lot has changed in that time. A lot about the world, a lot about the people I know and care about, and certainly a lot about me.
When I last stood here, I thought I was happy, contented. I thought I understood where I was, and who I wanted to be. I thought I was centred at last, devoid of the demons that had plagued me my entire adult life. I thought I was at peace with the person I had become.
I was wrong. You can’t be at peace whilst you deny something about your very being, while you still refuse to accept who you really are. You can’t be happy, you can’t be content.
At least I couldn’t,
And I couldn’t say what this place was anymore. What it meant to me, why it was important. Why I needed to be here. And that’s why I couldn’t stay here.
So I left. I went searching for the truth. I started asking myself the questions that I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answers to. I went down some dark paths, I did some dark things. At the time I felt like each one took me a step further from this spot, but now I realise that in one physical model of the universe, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line in the opposite direction. Every move I thought took me further away, actually brought me back.
Each one of those questions I answered, each one of those barriers I knocked down, each piece of the puzzle of who I really am that I slotted into place, were always going to bring me back.
But this time it’s the real me. This me is content, this me is centred, and this me does understand where he is and who he wants to be.
This me doesn’t want to be rid of his demons. This me accepts those demons make him who he is. They are not his plague, they are his power.
This spot, is Asterson House
This me is the Reaper. This me is David Shand.