Graduation.

He seemed to think that it ended here. That the receiver of his inevitable abuse, the scapegoat for his failures, for his scars, was finally reaching its end. He seemed to believe that in days, his life would push through the pain of the bottle-neck pressure, then burst into the freedom suggested with finishing these miles of his life. He planned his travels, his education, his future wife in his future life; rolling the word in his mouth like a foreign flavor; testing it out for size.

But this stage was just a gateway to the next; this end was simply the genesis of another trial; the birth of the remainder of his eternal battle with life itself. Perhaps he didn’t realise that yet; perhaps none of us do.

Until, that is, he finds himself waiting for the rest of his life to begin.