To the deep end and back...

You need the fog to lift completely so you can see exactly where you have been and the clear trail that led you there. To see exactly where you are standing now, the very spot where your feet have stolidly clung to the ground and are still keeping you, giving a vantage and steadiness. And you can breathe....clear, pure gulps of air, not laden with the mist and your chest can contract and expand, breathing in survivial and out the negativity and despair and sadness and hopes past and in... and out... and in... and out....until nothing more is expelled other than the physiological impurity of circulated air.

And once the breath has steadied and the last remaining shreds of moisture wispy clouds has cleared.....then you can look around.....and ahead. You can even squint your eyes to try and see what's on the anvil and beyond it. And you can take your first tentative steps forward. Fresh from the weight that you had carried all this while and once recently shed. Fresh from the memories, stark and bleak, making every prospect out there tinged with a faint rainbow...of survival and strength. Fresh from the knowledge, that you can get down....really down, while keeping up a semblance of functioning, and when you've served your sentence, you can also get up, truly up....and have it be the real thing. The first steps, thought tentative, are tinged by this legacy of survival. Sometimes you fear that those very steps can reverse direction and lead you back.

But thankfully, the fog has already cleared, and a few steps back won't throw you off the grid. If anything, it will give you a few more paces to be able to launch yourself into a sprint, should the instinct arise. And why should it not? When you faintly espy a rainbow in the horizon? When everything has a look of freshness and recovery? When the path forward is clear and the next foothold can be charted? When the load has been shed and you are lighter and more nimble. And the more you run, the more the specks that clung defiantly to you get knocked off by the breeze and the sheer willpower of living beyond existing!