the event horizon is the point after which the black hole consumes you. or whatever approaches it. there is no turning back after this point.
five years ago. i am driving in my old car, something battered and on the edge of collapse (much like me, at the time), red. i am winding through new jersey roads. i think of how my life has been lived in chains, and worse, how some of them were voluntary. i think of how this trip is a choice, this simple power to walk out the front door and go somewhere. how this is one of the first times in recent memory that i remember making a decision. i think of how i am now free, and how much weight freedom carries. Of how my blood is carrying both ecstasy and terror at this notion.
between two and three years ago. we return from party and no one’s come back with us. you sit at your desk chair and take off your shoes, i walk over. when you lift your head we put our foreheads together and for just thirty seconds i am inside of your mind and i know the world as you do. i take in everything you are, were, might be. from this point is when i will say i know you. we break and i walk back and forth to the bedroom door, trying to take this in before we dive into each other in other ways. i tell my friends later that i saw you, in all the ways one can. this was when i fell in love.
two years ago. i’ve been worn thin by the neediness and whining, by the eternal self obsession, by her various diseases. my care is punctuated by my cruelty, my reassurances are tense, and i am quickly losing patience. i am standing in the kitchen with the other one, and we’re trying to ignore her loud sobs from the other end of the house. sobs emitted with the sole purpose of getting someone to tend to her, because at 30 years old, she can’t ask for help, she can only manipulate others into giving it. she emerges and begin to berate me for not caring and i lose my mind. i scream loudly and in her face, and whatever my words were, they are nasty and she recoils. the last words i say are, “i am done with your bullshit.” and from that moment on, i was.
these are the moments from which we cannot return.
Wow! Such a powerful piece. It elicits such a visceral reaction. Well done.
thank you!
everything here hits me, hard. i love your language.
thank you, my friend. much appreciated, coming from someone as talented as you.
I’ve been racking my brains all weekend trying to think of the right comment for this piece and short of the GIF we spoke about, I just couldn’t find one. All I can say is that this is the reason that I kept coming back after the very first time I found you in Reverb. Please do not stop writing. Ever.
that’s ok. i am often stumped at commenting on posts i find awesome. thank you for your support, always.
This is good shit, sister. Good shit.
thank you <3
I want to do this. I think (I hope) I remember you saying that you would hope someone else would take it on. I knew I wanted to try as soon as you set your first one in the car and transported me there.
It might take me a while, the way the Where I’m From piece did, because I will have to dig that deeply. But I want to try. When I think back now, I think that there are only a handful of times like this in my life, and then in the next second I think there are thousands if I just sit still enough to sense them.
i did hope others would take it on – i find it amazing, the small moments that change our paths. and, as you say, how many of them there can be. but i think the ones that have had the biggest effect always stand out from the crowd.
found your blog on aol and was just what i was looking for, keep it up 🙂