Chapter 3: The View From the Man You’ve Become
From "The One Who Walks Forward" by Alex Blumberch
The first thing you see from the summit is the vastness.
A world stretched wide beneath you — valleys, ridges, shadows, light — a landscape that suddenly seems too big for the person you used to be, and exactly right for the person you are now. You stand still, breathing in a view your old life never allowed you to imagine.
Then comes the horizon of the new world. Beyond the mountain, the world doesn’t end — it opens. A new terrain unfolds — untouched, unclaimed, waiting for the man who chose to climb instead of shrink.
You feel it then: this isn’t the end of anything. This is the beginning.
Far in the distance, across the new world, you see her. Not waiting for you. Not calling to you. Not asking for you. Just standing in her becoming, a distant silhouette of the life you are now capable of walking toward. She is not your reward. She is your resolve. Not the reason you climb — but the direction your soul turns now that you’ve remembered who you are.
When your eyes finally find her on the horizon, your chest doesn’t give you just one thing. It gives you everything at once.
A calm knowing — the kind that settles low and steady, as if some ancient part of you whispers, ‘Of course she’s there.’
A pull — subtle, magnetic, not dragging you forward but aligning you. A soft ache — not pain, not longing, just the echo of a truth your body remembered before your mind did.
A rekindled fire — clean, focused, burning in a way that doesn’t scorch you this time. And beneath all of it, quiet but unmistakable, the feeling of destiny sliding into place with the soundless click of something that finally fits.
You don’t rush. You don’t shout. You don’t crumble. You simply stand there on the summit, breathing in a truth that doesn’t demand anything from you except that you remain the man you have become. Standing on the summit, you understand something about her that you were never able to see from the valley.
She isn’t waiting for you. She isn’t calling your name across the distance. She is climbing her own mountain. Her path is hers alone — shaped by her wounds, her lessons, her fire, her undoings, her rising.
And for the first time in your life, this doesn’t frighten you. It steadies you. Because you don’t need her to turn around. You don’t need her to change course. You don’t need her to save you from the climb. You simply know — with the same certainty that carried you up the mountain — that your paths are moving toward each other. Not because you chase. Not because she runs. Not because fate twists your hands together. Because two people walking their true paths will always meet in the middle.
And when that day comes, it won’t be need that brings you together. It will be recognition.You will know her not because you searched for her, but because you became the man who can stand beside her.
When you imagine her walking her own path, your chest doesn’t give you a single clean emotion. It gives you a flood.
Admiration— because you see now what you could never see from below: she isn’t behind you, she isn’t beneath you, she isn’t lost. She is climbing too.
Longing— not the hungry kind, not the desperate kind, but the soft ache of recognition. A pull that asks for nothing and still speaks everything.
Patience— because you finally understand that timing is an act of nature, not force.
Respect— deep, unquestioning, the kind that rises naturally when you witness another soul doing their own sacred work.
And beneath it all, quiet but unwavering, trust.
Not trust in a guarantee. Not trust in an outcome.
Trust in her. Trust in you. Trust in the truth that two people walking their highest paths cannot help but meet.
It doesn’t rush you. It doesn’t slow you. It aligns you. When you picture her on her own mountain, you don’t see ease. You see strength shaped by ache.
The feminine carries a landscape of wounds inside her — inherited, absorbed, lived-through — the kind of emotional gravity the masculine can feel but never fully comprehend.
Her climb is different from yours. Not harder. Not easier. Just deeper.
There are moments when her steps falter, when her breath trembles, when she pauses with her hand on her chest and thinks, ‘I can’t do this.’
But then she does. She takes another step. Steady. Determined. Quietly fierce in the way only the feminine can be.
Her strength isn’t loud. It isn’t muscular. It isn’t linear. It’s endurance. It’s resilience woven into softness. It’s the courage to keep climbing even when her heart feels like a cracked vessel still learning how to hold light.
And you don’t pity her. You don’t fear for her. You don’t try to fix her path. You respect her.
Because she is not climbing your mountain. She is climbing her own. And the feminine who rises through her pain is the feminine who can one day meet you at the summit.
She knows you exist. Of course she does. The connection between you is too old, too deep, too woven through the ribs to be forgotten. She feels you across the distance — the way your breath shifts when you climb, the way your resolve sharpens, the way your presence in the world has changed shape.
But she doesn’t turn her head. Not yet.
Because her climb isn’t about you. Not this time.
In other lives, in other cycles, in other unfinished versions of herself, she stepped off her own mountain too soon. She made herself small. She dimmed her light. She disappeared into the needs and shadows of others. But not in this lifetime. Not in this ascent.
This climb… she is doing for herself. Not for romance. Not for reunion.
Not for the story. For the part of her that has waited lifetimes to finally choose herself.
And this doesn’t distance you from her. It aligns you. Because the woman who reaches her own summit is the only woman who can truly meet you at yours. You don’t know when the meeting will come.
Not the day, not the hour, not the landscape.
But standing on the summit, you feel the outline of it — quiet, electric, inevitable. You feel warm air on your skin, like a memory from a life you haven’t lived yet. You see the shape of her in the distance, not waiting, not hoping, but standing in her own sovereignty — the kind of presence that only forms when a woman climbs her mountain for herself.
And something in your chest shifts, not with longing, but with recognition.
You know that when your paths finally cross, it will not be fragile. It will not be desperate. It will not be the meeting of two people trying to heal each other. It will be the moment when two ascents arrive at the same horizon.
Your breath will catch. Hers will steady. The ground between you will hum with something older than language. You will step forward. So will she.
Not to merge, not to complete, but to stand beside someone who has done their own becoming. And the world will shift — not dramatically, but unmistakably — because two sovereign beings walking in the same direction always reshape reality around them.
When you imagine the moment you will finally meet her, you don’t see it as an ending. Not really. You feel the culmination — yes — the closing of an old cycle, the final breath of everything that shaped you but can no longer hold you.It is the ending of the beginning — the last page of the first life you lived.
But the moment your eyes meet, the moment you stand in front of her not as the boy you were but as the man you became…
…that is not an ending.
That is ignition.
The beginning of something larger. Something wider. Something deeper than anything either of you could have built before you climbed your own mountains.
The field of your meeting is not a destination. It is a threshold. A doorway disguised as an embrace. A beginning disguised as reunion. Because two sovereign people do not come together to complete each other. They come together to expand the world.
You understand now that the union you’re walking toward will not collapse your path into hers nor hers into yours. Your paths will run parallel — two sovereign beings walking beside one another, not beneath, not above, not inside.But parallel does not mean separate. Because the deeper truth is this: your paths spiral.
You return to each other in widening loops — each time wiser, each time fuller, each time closer to the people you were meant to be. The parallel gives the love its stability. The spiral gives the love its destiny.
And when the day comes that your horizons touch, it will not be the merging of two lives, but the meeting of two worlds.
I am releasing a chapter every week. If you are still reading this - thank you.
— Alex Blumberch/Threadwalker
©2025 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
I am Loving this!!! :)