The Most Profound Journeys Are Journeys of Loss

‘The most profound journeys are journeys of loss’

Write a speech which reflects on the ways in which journeys go beyond physical transitions from one place to another.

Picture this: You open your eyes, light flooding your room through the already opened blinds. Your eyes adjust and your mother is siting on the end of your bed. Your clock is telling you the time is 10:30am and you're overwhelmed by confusion, as it's a school day and you're late but your mother isn't angry. Your mother is gasping and heaving, tears steadily falling down her face as she reaches and strokes yours.

And you know.

Something is wrong.

Fear engulfs you as you remember the nightmare you had last night. Of death, everywhere. You tip your mothers chin up and apprehensively ask what’s wrong, what’s happening, panic setting in, your mind racing, constant sound. With one gasping breath, her whole body shakes, and she looks at you helplessly in the eye. “Oh my beautiful girl..”

“Your sister killed herself last night”.

Silence, deafening silence… a tear slips down your cheek as you know what you dreamt last night, of her corpse on the ground, cold and dead, was a nightmare … But the nightmare became real when you woke up, and you can’t escape it. You feel a hole has been punched through your chest. This loss and hurt, will stay with you forever and the journey has only just begun.

I stand before you, fellow Year 11 peers, exposed, but choosing to put into words the unyielding journey of the loss of my sister at the end of Year 8. Desperately clinging to some form of light at the end of a tunnel, I bore the weight of the new challenge. But this journey has only just started with me and I cant fully tell you what this chapter of my life feels like, however I can try. And I am functioning, barely because loss is a journey that is harder than any physical conquest, and an important part of your life journey.

Loss can impact you more than any other extreme physical journey can. It takes your world, twists it round and surrounds it with a coiled barbed wire made of pain, and every time you attempt to move or heal, it cuts you. Your whole outlook on life turns black, and for a while …….you're numb. This is a feeling of interior turmoil. This is best described in a series of books which explains the agony of the loss of family. It is through the words of author Lemony Snicket, that