My father once told me, “it’s not important to win but it is important to take part.”

When I was little, I skinned my knee when I fell out of a tree. I was trying to get to the top because in my strange, childish little brain, the tree dared me to climb as high as I could and then climb higher. I climbed as high as I could but couldn’t climb any higher. The tree won that day. I was so upset, a child’s pique at being denied. My father held me and told me not to worry. He sat me down on our red, velvet couch, looked me straight in the eye and told me, “It’s not important to win but it is important to take part.” I was too little to understand what he meant, but as I grew older, I began to... As I was shunted from one home to another, one beating after another, I began to understand. I had admired him, had adored him with a child’s devotion - “it was him and me against the world.” How wrong I was... and how much more wrong he was...

People are strange creatures. My mother died bringing me into this world, and my father died trying (in his mind at least) to take me out of it... traumatising for a child, the depth of hatred a man can harbour for something he spawned. So now I spend my time living on streets, avoiding the homes and generally making my social worker’s life miserable. I can’t handle my own mind, being lost in its folding, twisting turns, rushing towards a feeble attempt at trying to find something worth not cutting my throat... my reason: it would make a mess. Isn’t that pathetic?

I’m tired now... so very tired. I find myself consumed more and more with lethargy, even breathing has become an effort. There’s a strange pool of red around me. It’s bright and dark and I’m sitting in it. It’s flowing from somewhere, a rich, red wine... a waterfall of red liquid pooling around me, staining clothes worn and threadbare... I see a girl beside me. She looks so tired, her eyes so heartbreakingly sad... I try to lift my hand to comfort her, to brush her long pale hair (filthy with the grime of the streets) away from her face, only to stop as she mirrors my action, her slow movements in tandem with mine. We stop and turn our heads to smile at each other, sharing in the warmth of human companionship, of simple comforting touch to ease the coldness settled so deeply within us. That same red liquid surrounds her.

I blink, confused, trying to see past the fog blanketing my mind in numb slumber... I’m so tired... but she looks so sad and empty, like someone who’s taken too many knocks in the ring of life and can’t get  up again... How can I leave this poor lonely child...? She looks so lost (like me) someone with no one and nothing to go home too... Does she have a home? I wonder to myself. In my heart I know the answer. It’s etched in every line of her face, every scar on her body, in her tattered, filthy rags and in dead eyes screaming with pain and sorrow and haunted by too many experiences that broke her... I look down slowly, languidly, a part of my mind still puzzling over my lethargy and the two pools of mingling. I found that strangely symbolic in my fog-fuddled mind... I raised my head to tell her and saw her still mirroring my movements.

I felt the bright heat of unbelievable fury then, for the fate of this fragile, broken child left on the street like so much refuse. I raged against the Gods then, hating them. Hating fate, hating the cruel, cruel sick world we all played this game called ‘life’ in. The savage strength of my inferno was enough to burn away the fog clouding my consciousness and I turned to embrace this child the world shunned so callously. I froze when I saw her, here every movement, the wild rage and overwhelming, compassionate sorrow, that driving urge to comfort someone who could not be comforted, identical to mine.

I glanced down and my heart froze when I saw that the pool of red I had thought mingling was just mirrored. I reached out hesitantly and my shaking fingers touched a cool surface, just as the haunted child’s did. The pitiful, hopeless wraith I had longed to comfort, was me,,, and the fingers touching the tormented reflection of a life gone wrong and a game lost left rust red streaks on the glass... it wasn’t paint or died water... it was blood... my blood pooling around me as I sank back into the fog... back down into oblivion.

The last thought I had... my mind had drifted back to when I had a life worth something... “It’s not important to win but it is important to take part.” I felt the last dregs of my broken humanity leave me and felt a mocking, insane, desperate laugh well up in my rasping throat... as I watched the last of my life’s blood drain from the ragged cuts on my scarred arms... winning isn’t everything... if that’s the case, why try to win? In this contest of life, the only alternative to absolute victory is death... to risk the ultimate to gain the ultimate... I risked it all... played the hand I was dealt as best I could, but sometimes your best isn’t enough... winning is everything when you have everything to lose... And I? I lost it all...