‘I am out of my depth at this altitude’
“Go ahead and laugh,
even if it hurts,
go ahead and pull the pin.
what if we could risk
everything we have,
and just let our walls cave in?”— Sleeping at Last, “Heart”
I don’t understand why, when someone decides to leave you, they don’t actually leave.
They hang around. They come around more than they ever did, especially toward the end. The end you saw coming from a thousand nautical miles away.
The end you anticipated with a mixture of dread and relief. A mixture whose percentages you’ll never actually reveal.
You just didn’t know how or when it was going to end.
You knew you’d be hurt and screwed seven ways to Sunday when it did finally come. (And you were sure proven right.)
Yet it still seemed a better, or at least a more-intriguing, option than having to pretend you didn’t notice that everything had changed anyway.
And maybe there’s some “better” to be found when the Everglades stop burning. But it isn’t over. Everything is on fire and they are waiting for a reaction out of you that you are never going to give.
Perhaps the more-appropriate lyric here comes from Phil Collins and Marylin Martin …
“You have no right
To ask me how I feel
You have no right
To speak to me so kind.”
Or not. I don’t think anyone wants to know how I feel right now. More like what do I know and when did I know it. And I’ve spent enough time playing Nancy Drew that I don’t have any more time to devote to anything other than catching up on gobs of lost time.
Just trying to “smile because it happened.” Maybe even laugh, even if it hurts.