the last step?

you know when you are climbing up the stairs in the dark, making your blind way to your room or the bathroom or wherever it is you go when you trek all the way upstairs at night, and you come to the end of the stair without realizing it?  You almost stumble with that awkward step that should have been another increment but instead was a feeble landing.  The floor comes up too fast and you thank the darkness that stultified you, because at least no one saw.  

You know that feeling? that star-crossed climb, that destined misstep?

That is what graduating from college feels like.

I feel as if Ive made this arduous and drawn-out climb to this pinnacle that came up on me and caught me unawares.  Not only that, but its as if ive blundered into the entrance of a pitch black room in a distant relative's house.  I cannot see the obstacles strewn about the floor: the bed to trip on, the dresser to viciously stub my toe on, the lamp to knock over before I can flick the hidden switch...  Yet I must go on, I must go in.  It's my family's house, I'm not forbidden entry.  Nonetheless I don't feel the open-arm reception that I was naively expecting, against the cascading admonitions of all my loved-ones, from the bright and scary post-college reality.

Im lost.  My compass only points south, back from whence I came to this....place.  I am a pawn of time and space, my only path is forward and all my past is but a trace.

there will be blood.