multiple sea monsters in a circle lake where i am stuck in a box but the walls have doors (and i'm scared)

     The second I turned 18 it was like I was placed into an endless black box. 

please don't read if you don't know me semi-personally because this is an irritating analogy (and also a lot of it is fake and went into a story too much so don't try to typecast yourself or any other person in it) :)

    The way that my mind works would make me sit down and give up for a day. The two paths in front of me being dimly lit by an unimaginable object would have overwhelmed me too much. I only started to move when I realized there was no more words for me to spell in the sand. I chose the left path first, as my brain positively connotates the world left and negative the right. 

    The entire world is dark, suffocated by trees on one side of the path. The other side is an entire body of water, with no end in the near distance. The water was black by the reflection of the sky but I refused to touch it. I assumed that it was going to sting my hand, eventually go into an open cut, slowly work its way through my body until it had eaten my flesh and the only color in the waters reflection would be red. 

    My days consisted of walking some ways, writing something in the sand, and watching my own reflection. I had nothing to think besides about the way I had been previous living. It had felt as if I had been dropped in a sleep paralysis torture chamber as my life was finally improving, finally seeming as to having a reason for doing things that was justifiable and knowing. I had started started understanding my own behavior in my own words. The lack of support in my youth had made sense, I had moved past it as a person and should recognize myself as someone who fought their way to the end of the path, as I felt like I was nearing the end of the path. 

    For the first time, I had begun to see something moving in the water. The object appeared to be green with human eyes and a boxy build. I felt my entire body scrunch into my shoulders, sworn all the energy into my back, until I was lying on the ground with my eyes closed. Had I finally met the monster that was going to swallow me whole?

    I was scared about standing at the edge of the path, trying to blend into the trees, because what if the trees had finally held me taut in their embrace? What if another creature came at me from the behind? Or the lights stopped working because I had stepped off the path? How about even a camera being placed into the tree branches, catching my horrible moment of embarrassment? 

    He began speaking, telling me that he could show me the way back, but he cannot get out of the water. I listened, was intrigued, and slowly started taking my step from afar. The first step forward was a step backwards, and I had begun moving in a different direction. 

    The man had told me that he was a man and that's what most of our conversations existed of him telling me that he is a man. I had already believed that he was upon first declaration, but he didn't care to keep insisting it. 

    I sulked closer and closer to the water as the journey continued. I had wanted to see him closer, allow myself to finally come to the conclusion of where he had came from. The questions that I asked started off as less trivial, maybe I could find something interesting to think about during the extended period of silence. I asked him if he wanted his children to look like him, and he said he was dependent on what his mother of said child was to look like. 

    I noticed on the path that my notes in the sand had disappeared, swiped away into meaningless letters and vowels. The sand didn't interest me as much anymore, I started to look at him and my own reflection in the water, something I stopped doing a while back. I knew my hair was even more thin and tangled than it ever had been in the previous eighteen years. I was so bored, and even more in the sight of the creature, so I developed a fondness and routine of checking my reflection before the creature would faint into the water. 

    The more I spoke about my life, the feeling of something else was formed. I took this contrived, one sided nonsense of intimacy of hearing my own thoughts and began to wonder where he would go when he was underwater. He claimed that he was going to the bathroom, but I had imagined it as an aquarium with a sea full of fish and other women fish. Another women fish that would make his children beautiful and look nothing like him. 

    I became so invested that I stopped thinking there was poising in the water. I was convinced that his inner world would be more interesting than mine, something worth abandoning this comforting dimension behind for. Maybe start a new life and develop new speech patterns, pretend to blend in with the other fish creatures. 

    The second that I suggest it I was shamed by silence. He said no and left me asking why, waiting for a response but his body moving against the water. The only words that he said to me again was, the water is getting too warm, I have to move inward. 

    We continued moving in our own ways; mine on the edge of the body of the water and his into the abyss. I watched him constantly, and he refused to make eye contact. I had never challenged him on why he couldn't move closer towards me, why he needed to go more inward. I accepted his own word for what it was and continued to doubt it in my own head. 

    One time that felt as long as a day, which was probably only about two hours, he disappeared underwater and I could no longer see him within my eyesight. I began to panic, ripping my hair out and calling into the sky for him to come back, for the universe to let him back into my scope of vision. The water was still dark by the time I had counted forty thousand steps and there was no green figure. 

    I came back to the things that I thought about before, my past, and now the prospective future in something I knew ended. I continued to imagine what our lives would have looked like if he had came to the shore, or if I had came into the water. His sandals placed on top of mine, my swimsuit drying in his bathroom, I was moved into a different type of delusion. 

    The worst of it was that I had believed he was leading me to the right way back. I had only followed him because it felt like the end was never near, and the last reason to continue would be to follow a mystical creature. It started to feel as if I had turned this smooth corner before, like the sand in my path was abused and man handled, by grubby small hands. I had found myself at the intersection of the two paths, once again. 

    It was time to go right because there was nothing else to do, not even a thing to kill myself with. Talking to myself became a necessary part of the process, going over and over the things that I have said to myself and others. I pretended to be every part in every interaction that I had ever had, and infringe more random tidbits that are not true too. I regurgitate, regurgitate, and regurgitate. In the process, it had felt like I discovered what my personality was like, how I presented myself to other people. 

    Another sea monster had appeared in the distance, this time covered in red vines over his skin. I didn't think that he would attack me necessarily, but I still hung the curve of the path once again. He immediately started talking, asking if I knew an out, speaking too quickly for me to understand. I chose to stay quiet, thinking about my words, wondering how I haven't gone over this scenario in my head yet. 

    He convivences me somehow to go the other direction, and I am interested again in a sea creature. This one talks a lot, almost too much, and I'm never sure how I'm suppose to respond to him. Lights on the path seem to get dimmer the more that I walk them, the more I trace over steps I had already walked. My symbols and figures in the sand stayed, unlike my words, on this side of the path. 

    I asked the sea creature why he thought this was and he said it was because most people remembered the actions that they took, rather than the words they spoke. I didn't believe him because I remembered everything I said, in excruciating detail, and couldn't stop thinking about the way my mouth enunciated words. 

    I noticed in this moment I took a different tone of voice when speaking to him, more low pitched than the last one. The green sea creature I talked to in such a high pitch, uptalking the entire time, making my words tight in my mouth. This one though, it's slowed down when I give my response, it's on the edge of boredom, unexcited with the new creature. And somehow, this one seems more interested when I go on little run on sentences and talk about something that has no relevance to our current situation. 

    He simply said okay, and went underwater, reappearing a long period later. It always occurred after we had moments of delayed tension- a tension that was caused by needing to understand what the other said-with him plunging under after a mere minute of having no response to my statement. I grew restlessly angry, spitting on the ground more and stomping as I moved. The ache on my shoulder had returned, dragging me down to the ground after long periods of movement. 

    I lay on my back once again and look into the sky, wondering how I made the same mistake again. The sea monster approaches the near edge of the lake as he realizes that I am no longer making noise. My sand laden hair sprawled across the path, my eye balls reflecting the ring lighting. There seemed to be nothing left for me to explore, mentally and physically. The only person next to me was not real and this entire box is not real. Everything I had done up to this point could have been summed up into this black box, and there is only three things to be worried about left in the world, so why was my back still aching? 

    The sea monster makes a noise, I slap my head across the sand and look at him, we look at one another and he disappears under the water to where ever he came from. I get up, and keep glancing back at the water to see if he appears, he doesn't. By the time I know that he will never appear again, I am back at the cross roads, and go back on the left track. 

    I don't look into the trees or water anymore. I walk straight forward and remember the things that took me time, took me a willing amount of patience. The things that I had to improve my natural condition of, my intelligence and athleticism and almost everything that I had done in my life. I had been trudging on the chore of my life because it had felt like I had been at the bottom of the scope, accepting the arms of victimhood. I surrendered myself to this belief and it had left me nothing but following sea monsters around because they said they acted like they knew more than I did, and I believed them. 

    One of my creative writing teachers said that writing is like a religious practice, you have to worship and go to the altar everyday or there won't be any truth faith in anything that you write. I kept moving on this path, accepting that this was my alter. The end must have been near because I had been starting to  believe that I could find it. 

    There was only a few blocks distance from this object, this block. It appeared that it was the same as my original divergent pathways, but instead of having nothing in between them there was a purple lockbox. The lock was hanging onto the hole, open slightly as if it had been abandoned by someone else. I threw the lock into the sand, bent on my knees, and opened the box. 

    The piece of paper read, there are doors on the walls, and they are only fifteen feet away. 

   

     This entire story, or loosely followed analogy on my life, is based off a review that I read for the movie, Beau is Afraid. Not explaining the plot, but the reviewer wrote this about the main character: Self analysis becomes counterproductive and you need to stop exploring the inside of your head and just get out of it. 

    The fear in my life persists as I get older, as I found out this year. I think after my freshmen year I thought that my anxiety was only a phase of my life, and not an ongoing journey that I had to constantly deal with. I still watch myself through the lens of others, and the lens of myself, one that is unforgiving and doubting. In doing so, I keep on reliving old memories, in a way of trying to stop the new ones from arriving at a bad conclusion. This tends to manifest in my interactions with men, where I think I can control the outcome better than I can. However, this level of self reflection leaves me blinded in fear of preforming any new actions, and I am left back where I started when I was 18, anxious and fearful. 

    If I had just continued my path, or simply walked into the woods, I would have found my way out. I am trying to make steps in this new direction, so please be understanding when I can't explain why I can't do something, because I have been trying to for so long.