Song:
The Miracle in Me by Shinedown
Specific Lyric:
"Everchanging, the storyline that keeps me alive."


The one thing that endures through all; that one concept that causes wars and ends lives, but also is the driving force behind fairy tales; the one reality that is eternal. Oh, not love. Change.

Some people hate it; some fear what it might do to their little bubble of perfection. To those who couldn't adapt, it was the one thing that drove them to build up their little walls. But he respected change; it was the only thing that stayed with him, that kept him safe. While it imprisoned others in their insecurities, it freed him from himself. If he spent all of his time trying to change, to adapt to whatever the world threw at him, he could forget about his past, about his shortcomings, about the mistakes he could never seem to avoid. As long as the storyline of his life was ever shifting, he could stay alive inside.

And that beautiful chaos, that external turmoil that kept his mind from writhing, changed course when he met her. She was the fixed point in all of time and space, of all that pain and chaos. When he focused on her, it didn't just dampen the strength of his ghosts, it destroyed them.

The only thing about the change was that it left no room for love. The way the change saved him was by hardening him, by slowly taking away his ability to feel emotions, his caring humanity. Every day was just another 24 hours before he died, an amount of time that meant nothing to him. He just went through the motions, performing the tasks at hand without caring what happened to him or anyone around him. He couldn't care. If he allowed himself to actually worry about somebody's wellbeing, he'd just get burned when they left, torn when they died, jaded when they showed their lack of care towards him.

This is not a story of love. A story of doubt, regret, or insecurities. It is not a tale of love and hate, of peace and war. This is a story of what happened when the everchanging, always-shifting storyline that kept a young man alive was set straight. This is a story of change.