Acidic Reflections of Trips Long Past, Still to Come, and Never to Be

It was just me and you in the room, in bed, swaying to oldies. It was the only place I wanted to be and I found that I was happy that I didn’t yearn for something more. I imagined everything other than this room, this feeling, and you to be impersonal, unfamiliar, and frightening. The city is big yes, but more importantly fast and cut-throat. These four walls will protect us. But then the four walls caved in, got closer and closer like I was being strangled and I felt claustrophobic. I needed to go out and be amongst the impersonal, the scary, the unfarmiliar so that I could appreciate the mundane. I needed to explore! I needed to do things I’d never done before! Get dirty, feel unsafe, cry a little! I imagined life as a big adventure or a mystery waiting to be solved and I wanted to solve it! Life is waiting for me out there! What the hell am I doing in this room staring at a picture? But then I convinced myself that I shouldn’t need to do that. That I should be able to conjur up gratitude, peace, and contentment from somewhere deep within my soul. And every decision felt so weighty, so full of “what-ifs.” I was in prison, a mental prison. Is there any other kind?

Everything was big and scary. Everything was small and intimate. Nothing felt good. Everything felt good. I had no idea who I was or how to be myself. I was myself and it felt so good. 

I found the bad music and the sky turned dark. My attention turned to all of the garbage lying around me and the crowds of people checking their cell phones and complaining about the light drizzle. Then I found the good music and it was bliss. Colors were brighter and my focus drifted towards the happy, dancing people, the careless ones. I danced and thought to myself “this is it! All you have you to do is tune into the good music!” Which is very different from finding the good music.

Inklings of that earlier ‘weighing down’ episode kept creeping to the forefront of my consciousness. I could feel them coming on – those doubts, those “what-ifs?,” that gal in my head trying to convince me that I should try and find a way to enjoy things that didn’t feel right. But I had found the good music and I was determined to keep it playing for as long as possible. And so I shooed them away and felt empowered.

What if this never ends? Or, worse, what if it’s already over and I just don’t know it. Or, better, what if it’s a glimpse of eternity that I’ve just stumbled upon. The beginning of the collusion of trips long past, still to come, and never to be. The sky doesn’t turn dark in the winter and colors aren’t more majestic in the fall. It’s my own undoing and redoing.