
"Life is a motherfucker, living it anyway, and sometimes laughing in the process, is where humanity is won."
I must've been going 80 when he swerved into my lane. I'd followed him impatiently for about two miles, chugging along the interstate at 65 mph in the fast lane while he kept pace up ahead with the truck to his right. I tried not to tailgate; mostly, I succeeded.
I flashed my lights instead. He looked in his mirror and kept on going in his old blue van. And then, finally, a break between the truck and the van.
I slipped into the space in the right lane and accelerated, finally free in the Tuesday evening light. He chose then to switch lanes. I must've been going 80 when he swerved into my lane. I sat on my horn and swerved right onto the rough shoulder; he sat on his horn and kept coming.
We barely missed each other. In the rapidly expanding space between us, he followed me patiently, flashing his lights until he disappeared in the creeping dusk.
For the second time in a week on that road, I wanted to pull over and cry. I wasn't sure if I was angry or sobbing or crazy. Ears flaming, hands shaking, chest heaving, heart exploding. I turned the a/c vents toward me and let them chill me 'til I could breathe. And speak.
I sat on the living room floor tonight on the brink of a PTSD precipice that
opened three years ago, that is so often aggravated by life. Because life can put one through the wringer in ways that only life can.
Professional in an industry confusing its revolution with death. Academic; exhaustion. Personal, always ever present, both weighty and light. The trick is finding emotional balance in the run; sometimes easy, mostly elusive.
It was so easy at that moment on the floor, at precipice's edge, to let go, to fall, to procrastinate, to sleep, to wake up unresolved in the morning and start again. Instead, I wrote. Productive writing.
I read a short story. Reading has this way of bringing me into contact with others' words, of coming across exactly the things I need to see or hear at the moment.
"Less time needs to be spent on dragons and more on our ability to forge swords for battle, and the skill with which we've used them."
Finding the words is the easy part. Following them is another story I've been trying to write for a long, long time. Do we ever quite figure it out?
Labels: life, me