The Walking Wounded

We are all so fragile: little feathers floating in the breeze, coasting in any direction the wind chooses, stopping, going, fluttering every which way. Some might say aimlessly, while others say purposefully.

But whose purpose is it?

Have you ever had the sudden urge to open a car door as it speeds down a freeway? Or to not take that step to solid ground as the escalator reaches the top? Sometimes I stare off the edge of a cliff or over the railing of a balcony and wonder what would happen if I took a step over, if I tumbled down from safety to something else entirely.

I am not crazy. In fact, I think I'm more sane than ever.

But sometimes ghosts make their way back. Sometimes people you thought you put to rest find you again, haunting your dreams. With an innocent song or smell. A picture. A flower. The sound of his voice. A car that reminds you of his. Any one of those things can steal the air from your lungs, stop the beats in your heart, and bring you back to a place you thought you left long ago. And there you are, in a pool on the floor, a puddle of your old weakness.

I think every human has those moments, and is susceptible to them every day of his or her life.

Every day, we walk the line, tightroping our way through our lives, following a path either precarious or predestined. We gamble with ourselves about the decisions and the actions and the questions of our lives: one more look and I will never look back, one last kiss, one last call and then I'll let it go.

We wonder what it would be like to jump out of a plane, to sabotage our safety, when we really should question the importance of intact limbs and unbroken hearts.

I am not crazy. But every once in a while, I wonder. Is staying on the rope the best thing for me? Is walking that wobbly safety-line really worth it? Or should I take that temptation, and leap away from the known path, the expected path, and finally let myself live?

Well. I took one step off, and his face flickered back into focus. He is back in my mind. My heart flutters through the memories of our fiction, that feather resting for a moment in possibility and quickly flying away for good. I know it was not real. But then why am I still shattered apart at the thought of him?

Nearly two years ago, I said goodbye and meant it. Sometimes, though, I picture that path--in that tenuous moment of what-might-have-been, I see a whole world, a life we will never live. It is a glimpse, a flash imagined on a movie screen, a whim there briefly and then gone.

I still gamble with myself. I still look over the edge, flirting with disaster. Maybe next time I jump out of a high-speed vehicle, the flesh wounds will be more than the illusion I suffered with him.