Nevermore

I stepped onto the silver balcony outside of my master bedroom and inhaled the fresh, moist air that the morning had to offer. I looked straight ahead, noticing that the morning was still refreshing, despite the time. I had never been a morning person. Yet when I turned eighteen last year, it became a turning point, allowing me to change my habits. Closing my eyelids to hide my sapphire eyes from the morning glory, I felt the mist brush upon my face as I felt shivers down my spine at the slight chill of the early morning. Instantly, I opened my eyes, which darted off to the balsam firs that were surrounded by the misty fog. Leaning over on the balcony railing, I looked around calmly knowing that I had yet another ten minutes before I had to get ready for my classes.

Staring straight through the mist, I wanted to know just how condensed thin grey molecules of cloud water could make something like balsam firs look intoxicating. I felt myself drown in the sight of the mist as I recollected my doubts, which I did not want to remember at all. The effect of a morning’s mist is like a fading dream, my mother once told me. Just now, I realized that she was right this one time. The mist had caused uncertainty or obscurity; something about the mist made it difficult to see or understand.

My name is Emmett Ray Richards, and yet I still have not progressed further than that. My name is the kind of name with no important significance behind it, just like me having no importance. My one dream is to understand complexities and eliminate doubts. Nevertheless, this seems impossible as everything fades just as uncertainties occur, similarly, to how a morning’s mist contributes to ambiguity and doubt. I want to understand how to progress in life and what I want to do in my life.

I have had many complexities in the choosing of my path in life. My mom wanted me to be a chemical engineer; my dad wanted me to be a criminal lawyer. My brother wanted me to join in his corporation and be his partner. My friends wanted me to join them in art. Yet, no one allowed me to find out what I really wanted to do. Doubts and uncertainties like these cause me to think deeply about the chance of humans understanding their doubts.

“Why,” I whispered into the thin fog, as the white, cloudlike matter swirled around my exhaled breath. I added subconsciously afterwards, “Why do my dreams have to all fade?”

I wanted to drift into the mist, be lost away forever, and not make decisions. I wanted my dream of understanding complexities not to fade away. Even though I wanted things to happen, I could never make them happen. Even though I seem to hate the mist, I could never bring myself to hate it entirely. There was always something about the morning mist which made it appealing to my confused self. I really did not know. Was it the way that it just swirled around my breath when I exhale? Was it the way I just lose myself into the mist whilst staring at it? Was it that way it causes everything to disappear gradually like a fading dream?

Leaning closer on the railing, I felt myself sink into the mist’s image. The way the white fog circled around the balsam firs and how the mist made everything so hard to see, it made everything in this morning so fascinating. I closed my eyes, losing myself to the effect of the morning’s mist. I wanted to make everything fall into a fading dream, regardless of my efforts to make my dream succeed. I wanted to forget everything, yet find a solution to everything.

Mostly, I wanted an answer to my occupation question. What was I supposed to become? The mist did not help me at all as my thoughts all faded in response to the mist. I opened my sapphire eyes and raked my fingers through my ebony black hair in frustration. What was I supposed to do? Why did the mist have such an important effect on my decision? I laughed at myself—I knew that I was turning crazy. Who would say that a natural phenomenon such as the morning mist would have such an effect on decisions?

I shook my head continuously to shake any ramblings or rants that were running through my head. Afterwards, I stayed calm as I went over my choices. I always had an interest in science, which was why I enrolled myself in General Sciences, but I did not know much further than that. Everyone had such an influence on me that I could not even think for myself. In fact, for a few months before I graduated from the high school I was in, I estranged from my friends. All I wanted to do was graduate with at least honours and be accepted into a reasonable and well-reputed university. Yet, I did not like any second of the separation of my friends. The initiation for this drastic measure was to try to understand what I wanted to do in life. However, even this did not help at all, which was why I did not want to take drastic measures like that again.

I knew that there was something out there for me. I knew that someday, hopefully soon, I would be able to figure out what I wanted to do in life and not allow influences like my family and friends and even the mist take control of my decisions. I had a dream, a dream of understanding the doubts and complications of life. I wanted that dream to prevail, not to fade away because of the effect of a morning’s mist. I did not want my dream to be clouded by the mist of uncertainty and obscurity just as items such as balsam firs are clouded by the morning’s mist. I inhaled one deep breath of what the morning had to offer and stepped back inside my two-story house, knowing that one day, the mist would never be able to let my one dream fade off into its hazy caverns.

“Never again,” I whispered to myself, well, more like to the morning mist, which was subdued as the dawn revealed radiant sunlight, which slowly emerged through the balsam firs.