The box in the forest (an equally tragic spin on the well-known myth)

When I was 13, I found a box in the forest. The mystery that hid behind the ominous front put on by the trees had not been appealing to me up until this point; however, something in me changed. My mind now longed for answers. I wanted to know everything. As my brain developed, my world grew larger, and my curiosity to fill in the blanks overcame my juvenile hesitation. Eager to find out what was beyond my realm of familiarity, I strolled into the forest, and as I wandered deeper, the trees grew thicker and lusher with life. My limbs seemed to disappear as nature welcomed me with open arms. This world was beyond anything I had ever known, so I was unable to bring my blanket of protection—the one that consumed me during every peaceful sleep of my childhood. All of a sudden, the box emerged before me, a small yet powerful display of a luminous glow that seemed to light up the whole forest. This is it, I thought to myself. This is the prize of growing up. I had finally unlocked the treasure that could only be acquired by those who were mature enough. I was done being treated like a kid—I wanted respect, I wanted  independence, and I wanted something new. My desires rapidly circled through my brain like a tornado, one powerful enough to sweep my body into the air and closer to the box. I reached for it. The closer I got, the more appealing it became. I tell myself I wish I’d known, but that's the thing with a knowledge paradox. Knowing what was in the box would have led me to the same depressing fate. I still fantasize about what could have gone differently and I can still see it clearly now: my young mind and short attention span quickly finds fascination with some other silly thing, and I exit the forest unscathed. But that’s not what happened, and dwelling on my naive mistake is pointless. I know now that one way or another, I would have stumbled upon the box anyway. I can’t be mad at my younger self for exercising a fundamental behavior of human nature, the spirit of inquiry. So I reached for the box. With one swift movement, my life turned into a series of before and afters. The box screamed open the moment I laid my hand on the golden sarcophagus, and it was instantaneously impossible to go back. The roar of the box illuminated my surroundings, and this was the moment I found out everything I knew was a cruel facade put on to make me believe. The forest I believed I was walking through—the one thick and lush with life—was gone. I wanted to know where it went and what oblivion it escaped to. Could I go there? I wanted to go there, and I desperately tried. But the trees were dead, and they were dead the whole time. I grabbed at branches, taking multiple at a time, hoping my touch could restore their beauty. Maybe it wasn’t gone for good. But with every scrape I made at the uninhabited shell of a tree in front of me, the duller the situation became and the quicker my hope for rehabilitation diminished. This was reality. Slowly, my memories of the prolific forest began to fade, and all I could do was let it happen; all I could do was sit and watch. Something that was mine was being stolen from me right in front of my eyes. Unable to shake the relentless feeling of loss, my sadness and desperation simmered and transformed into fuel for my rage. I punched the dead tree in front of me. My flesh tore as my knuckles scraped against the lifeless bark, and faded gray was replaced with an abrasive red stain—the only color the tree had left and would ever have. The illusion of youth covering and protecting me from the consequences of life had shed its skin and laid my fate bare in front of me. All the trees were dead. You can’t escape death. Everyone dies, no matter how full of life you think they may be. The mystery of life I so badly wanted to know could be answered with a single word, five letters pieced together in my head countless times before—death. Previously, that word meant nothing to me, and I floated through life unaffected by its gravity. It never occurred to me that the loss of life was a universal experience—in fact, the only constant among all human beings. Now I see it everywhere—those 5 letters laid out boldly in front of me. And so I walked out of the forest. My physical body remained the same: a thirteen-year-old girl awkwardly straddling between the last scraps of her adolescence and the dawn of her teenage years, but just because I looked the same doesn’t mean I was. Something changed in me that day. The first step I took was unforgiving and symbolic of a new journey, one where I would have to navigate life knowing what I now knew. I found that it took significantly more energy for my limbs to cut through the heavy air, and every word I muttered sank upon entrance into the unforgiving atmosphere. I ran away from that forest and never looked back, but never going back didn’t mean I would forget. To this day, I still grieve the person I was before I found the box.