The Road That Remembered Me

By the time I was returning from a place I went to in the evening. The main bridge that leads to my house directly had already been covered up by rain due to heavy downfall. And one of the people that we were together with, almost close to the bridge, said one thing that I cannot easily forget: “God is testing out faith” because the bridge hardly gets filled up to those levels that it overflows, but the rain that day was extremely too much.

It will start, then stop. Start again and stop. It continued like that for hours.

“Let's go and take the next route,” one person told all of us, and then another person tapped my hand twice, the way you tap someone as if it was urgent.

The old route ran past two streets a bit far away from my street. A street I was not used to, and it had been long since I passed through it, but I can remember a football pitch around the corner that was still there and this Anglican church right beside it. The church owns the field, which is open to everyone who wants to play there.

“Walk fast, it's getting late,” one of the people we were going together said; we stay not too far from each other. I smiled and looked at him even though I was exhausted.

“I am trying my best,” I said.

“You can do better.” He replied.

Through my walking in that street, I could remember some of the old places that seemed not to have changed; they just remained the same. The old barber shop, the music studio next to it where one of my old friends took me to once, but I never got to record any music even though I had planned to just to see how it feels. We had a whole plan drawn out inside one exercise book we took to the studio, but none of the plans was used.

“You once came here with a big plan to record a music," my mind quietly reminded me suddenly, not even looking at my present condition. But I replied in my mind again. "Yes I remember”

I did not give a fast mind response. I didn't expect my mind to recall that and turn it into a question because it was a long time ago, and a lot of things had happened over time.

"Maybe God wanted us to pass through this street on purpose" one of us, who were going together, said. And when I looked at it, that was actually true. It was to remind me of something I used and wanted to do.

This time, I was almost exhausted and was using the last energy in me to walk, and just after like thirty five minutes of walking, we reconnected to my street even though my house was still like a four-minute walk.

Until I got home, I didn't allow anything to make me think about anything again. But I finally arrived, and I entered my house. I got in so different that I was when I got to that bridge some minutes ago, not because anything in particular happened to me, but because I passed through a place I genuinely wanted to do something real, and I had no chance to do it, and I never even gave it a try again even though it was so much in my mind.

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Thank you for reading.

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