I know that you’re currently facing down the barrel of a moment you’ve been trying to avoid since before you can remember. I’m sorry that another Christmas has come around with it’s characteristic ‘if only’s’ and ‘what if’s’, of hoping that for once you could just be selfish and do what you wanted with no thought of the consequences. Guilt knocks at your door again, asking for shelter from the blizzard, and you acquiesce like you always do, pretending there is enough room for him.
I’m sorry that you’ve had to swallow a thousand bitter pills in order to protect someone from the ugly truth. Always driven by the hope that someday the cog in the hamster wheel you couldn’t escape would rust and you’d finally have the freedom to rest, and the stillness to think. I applaud your idealism, your faith in the idea that if you just held on for a little longer, something might change, the cycle would just tire itself out and unbind you. You have always known that the only way to get off the train was to force the doors open yourself and jump the hell out. The force majeure never came, no miraculous scape goat appeared to offer up an easy way out, because the only way is through. And most of the time, this is fine, you like the thrill of walking through the fire. But when it comes to this, your Achilles heal, to facing the music and speaking your truth no matter how much it may hurt someone else, you freeze.
You stand on yet another cliff edge, only now, you’re starting to see the similarities. How the rocks have formed, eroded, the way that the sand clumps under your feet, the colour of the clay, that claw-like shape that stuck out right under your toe. This is the same cliff, for you have never jumped.
In a bid to be right, to be nice, to avoid being boxed in with the ‘bad people’, you have deluded yourself, in your mind you have taken the leap many times. But it was all for show. You thought you could fool yourself and everyone else, thought you’d outsmarted it. If you just closed your eyes and convinced yourself that you’d jumped, behave the way those who have jumped behave, maybe you could skip the whole thing and nobody, especially you, would notice the difference.
But some things are beyond escaping. You can circle them, avoid them, swerve them as long as you wish but at the end of the day, you’re focus is always on them. You spend your life becoming a pro at dodging that thing, and never moving forward, fooling yourself that you have outmanoeuvred it but really it’s become your centre of gravity.
But how can it be? You remember so vividly jumping. That time when life so delicately fell into place, rewarding you with peace at last. You swear you could still taste the sweet juices of the fruits of your labour. And yet, it was all just a dream, an illusion you created to keep you company at night as you floated further and further away from yourself. But now, not even 100 drinks will inebriate reality, the nicotine no longer hits the spot, the bellyache from the binge is now outweighed by the ringing of self-abandonment in your ears. Cease and desist.
The dust settles and you are left with the choice once again. Will you keep treading water to keep their head above water? Until now you have been lucky, both of you have stayed afloat. You’ve swallowed water here and there, the salt has crystallised in your lungs, but you’ve managed fine, so what’s the issue with surviving this way for the rest of time?
You want to be free and yet you stay loyal to the chains that bind you. But what if, next time you’re submerged trying to save them, you don’t make it back up again?
The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or of joy. The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone. ALAN LIGHTMAN, ‘EINSTEIN’S DREAMS’