i'd want to run my hands through sheets of suspended raindrops

I’m angry again and I really hate it.

I don’t want to have to process all this. I don’t want to come to the conclusions about M that I’m coming to. I don’t want to cast a cloud over memories that had only ever been clear sky. I don’t want to watch the boy I trusted wholly become the boy I can’t trust at all. I don’t want to look at M and not see good, not see kind, not see honest.

I want to yell “Stop!”

I want the world to slow its rotation. I want things to fly off tables and crash against the wall as the inertia that they are accustomed to dissipates. And stops. And all is calm. And clear. And I can breath again. I want to hear only quiet. And to know that everything was still for now. No more lies could be told. No more cold stares. No. More.

I would not yell “go” for quite some time.

I would lay in parks on wet grass that will never dry and look up at the unmoving sun. I would sleep for hours and hours to clear my head, to rest. I would drive to my home town and visit all the places I remember from my childhood. I would poke around in memories and circumstance and try to find some answers. Try to find myself in all the clutter.

I think only guilt could ever make me start the world up again. Seeing people, everywhere, in suspended animation with places to be and lives to lead would wear on me. Make me feel indulgent. I would realize that I was keeping them in places they might not want to be kept in. In hospitals and cemeteries and accident scenes.

I would wonder how many times I had been halted. Stuck, unknowingly, in the same spot for days or months or years. I’d wonder who else had the power to yell stop. Wonder if everyone did or if it was just me. Wonder if I was, if we all were, constantly bouncing back and forth between moving forward and not moving at all. Forward. Stopped. Forward. Stopped.

So one day, I’d yell go. Maybe I could hold out for so long that I’d be ok. I’d have come to terms with all this confusion and disappointment and could play out the final days of M and I with the emotional detachment and secret smile I long for.

But no.

That’s not how the world is. Not how it works. We are forever moving forward through the muck and the joy. Always toward some end. And I have to stay in the car for the whole ride. Seat belted in place. Waiting and wondering where I’m going and when I’ll get there.

We all have to do that.

Maybe there is peace in the commonality. I am not the only one who has had a broken heart. I am not the only one who has wondered who I am and why I’m here and where I’m going. We all have.

Maybe this commonality is the stopped world I’m looking for - this moving forward with everyone else, many in worse boats than mine, many with more reasons to yell stop. Lost children, dying parents, illnesses.

We’ve all had broken hearts. All felt powerless. All felt small. It’s part of this breathing thing. How quickly we forget that the person on the other side of the counter is more like us than different. Sharing this same time. This same space.

There is much to be thankful for, even when you wish that everything were different. I am still healthy. I have a good head on my shoulders. Good friends. A mom willing to listen to me whine most of the time. A far away boy who says cool stuff like this to me: you have a heart so big it’s hard to hear you speak over the thumpty thump. I have a nice place to live. I can still pull off pigtails at age 33. The world is full of people I don’t know yet and in that lot is someone I will think is crazy wonderful sexy cool and feel lucky for having run into.

Hmmmm, maybe this post will help me end my whining for a bit.

OH, WHO AM I KIDDING.

I’ll whine more, but this is still alright. I feel kinda good right now. Maybe a little hopeful again.

Nice.