Confirmation

An open door greets me with the scents of fall.

The sun slanting through the low hanging clouds, alighting softly on the reds and yellows and oranges and browns of the fallen leaves, creates the most distinct aroma; an aroma simultaneously sweet and musky, warm and chilly. The Autumn breeze brings with it the crisp smell of ripened apples, the earthy smell of recently moistened soil, and the faint ozone smell of rain.

Autumn is my favorite season.

I step out into the world, allowing my feet to take me where they please. I place one foot after the other, listening to the leaves crunch beneath my feet and feeling the earth pushing up against me, supporting me. I step through cool puddles that are like tiny ponds, the grass blades like seaweed stretching up towards the sun in the crystal-clear, green blue water, each puddle like a whole world, a snow globe that's been turned on its head while its inhabitants hang on for dear life, clinging to the earth for fear of falling into the sky.

I follow my own path, meandering to and fro, with no particular destination in mind. The sky is dark, but every so often a beam of pure gold will shoot through a gap, a crack in the otherwise perfect, Lambertian sky.

After an eternity of wandering, I stumble across an old bench, facing a stream that trickles in the half light. The bench appears to have been absorbed by the earth as fluffy green moss grows happily up each decaying stump. The whole bench is olive, aged and crumbling, its cracks and creases telling the story of decades of rain and snow that have fallen on its surface, absorbed and remembered in every fiber of its being. Old, old as time perhaps, with a million stories to tell, each day creating new memories to be stored deep within its cedar annals.

This day is no exception.

On the bench, she sits with her head in her hands in a melancholy silence, her chestnut hair the personification of the season as it hangs languidly like a drape around her hidden visage, ultimately settling on her knees, pooling like melted milk chocolate.

I seat myself softly next to her, the bench creaking its welcome, and she looks up at me, her green eyes sparkling with tiredness, with age, and with tears, and they appear to me like the purest emerald, a vivid mixture of watercolors melding together to create the most vivid sea-foam green.

We sit in silence for a while, as the trickling water tickles our ears.

"Sometimes," she starts, "it's just hard to get out of bed. I lie there thinking of all the things I should be doing and of all the things I wish I could be doing and of all the things I fear I may never do, and I am consumed by the desire to cease existing, if only for a moment, just to breathe one breath of serenity."

Silence fills the gap between us.

"And I wonder," she continues, "what it means to truly exist. There are times when I feel nothing and I wonder if I am alive. I wonder if I can be seen or heard or touched."

She pulls her knees to her chest.

"And every so often, I welcome the pang of loneliness that accompanies existence because it reminds me that I am, in fact, alive. But inevitably, numbness returns and I can't feel anything. 'Where am I?' I ask. 'Who am I?' I ask. No one ever answers me and I fade into the background, falling deeper and deeper into the never-ending pit of my own consciousness."

She turns to me, eyes bubbling with an intensity that can only be borne of despair.

"Do I exist?" She asks me. I think it is the most important question I have ever been asked.

"Yes," I whisper quietly. "You exist. You are here. I can see you."

Her eyes water again, melting like snow.

"I can see you."