The Road, Cormac McCarthy
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath. He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none. In the dream from which he’d wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast.
One of the only books I’ve ever read that I seriously couldn't put down. Which was strange, considering the circumstances. I was on my third day of inpatient rehab for a spiraling out of control crystal meth addiction. A fun little hobby which ended up costing me my job, my apartment, and if that was not enough I had just tested HIV+. Not the best year, to put it mildly.
My sister had brought the book when she came to visit. I thanked her dispassionately, secretly annoyed that she thought I was there to relax and enjoy a good book. A few hours later, out of sheer loneliness, boredom, and missing my dog, the only friend I had left, I picked it up (and also because rehab is not exactly a social event in your first few days, let me tell you). Much to my surprise, I was hooked, no pun intended.
It took me a few years and a lot of therapy to realize that for me, The Road was probably a metaphor for sticking to something. A story of a father and son, in a post apocalyptic waste zone with nothing to live for, literally. Besides each other. Through impossible and horrific circumstance they keep on walking. Whether it was the strength of the human survival instinct, or the fear of letting the other one down, they carried on. I suppose without thinking about it at the time, I didn’t want to let my dog or my sister down, the one human and one scraggy mutt that still believed in me, even when I didn’t. Over ten years later I’m happy to say I didn’t let them down.
