Is complete and now I can see nothing but the path in front of me.

I just got back from visiting my former life. It was an ugly thing; my former life. I was an ugly person. Driven by the wrong things... obsessed with the wrong thoughts... given to the wrong impulses.

I drove across my beautiful country. A blur of color and shape... and arrived at the all-to-familiar places from my past. They no longer held any appeal for me. Just being there made me tired.

I saw ugly, twisted faces I had once cared for... I heard the same old lies and half-truths... I met new twisted and perverse people for whom I once would have instantly harbored a new hatred... but now I can see them for what they truly are and I can let it go.

I didn't get an opportunity to say what I needed to say. But that's OK. I am at peace with it. The injustice experienced is simply a reaffirmation that there will never be any reconciliation with the past. And knowing this going in... I wasn't surprised or upset over the outcome. I was relieved. I found closure. I found a way to make peace with myself.

And when I looked in my rear-view mirror at those I couldn't wait to get away from I saw that they were still entrenched in their entitlement... still slaves to their own pride and insufferable egos.

They are nothing to be angry about now. After this last meeting, I realize that they are to be pitied for their souls are lost.

Their lives are empty.

And they will live out their empty lives moving from one crisis to another. Utterly pathetic dramatizations of real life which are cultivated to give the illusion of substance so they can feign relevance and decry the injustices of their own actions with entitled-self-righteous indignation.

BUT I AM FREE!

Free from the emotional chains of slavery they would have me wear.

Free from the imaginary sense of obligation that I would tangle myself in.

Free from those whom I loathe and detest the most... from those who pretend to live with the highest moral standards but are so completely devoid of morality that the cancer born from their deeds is now eating at their very health; a physical manifestation of the hatred and anger they project onto all around them.

A cane of deceit betrays their inner ugliness...
The puffy-faced redness of alcoholism stretching skin full of wrinkles...
Highlights in their hair to hide the rot which eats at their flesh...
Fear born of the lies which brew in their sick mind and shine through the dull-rheumy cast of green eyes once so bright...

I once wished that they would all burn in Hell for the evils they bore into my life.

And now that I have been away and gained the clarity that time and distance offer I see that I need not wish this any more; for they are already in Hell.

A Hell of their own making; surrounded by imps and pretenders who prod them deeper into their own delusional and pathetic existence.

At night they drink the bitter broth of wasted potential and cry themselves to sleep over the cruel and unfair nature of life. And in this we find the true nature of their tragic fault... that they will never understand that it is their own poor choices which brought them to this place.

That no one but themselves can be blamed for the life they now live.

But they still try to blame me.

And I no longer care.

I AM FREE.

AND I WILL NEVER GO BACK AGAIN.