getting to always

(originally posted 4/22/2022)

Time, time, time

See what’s become of me

While I looked around for my possibilities*

Roger had something, an emotion, let’s leave it at that, that he always wanted to feel.

At present he had no desire to stop feeling it, but he worried that one day he would. This troubled him immensely.

A week passed and he still felt it, but the thought of one day not feeling it sat in the pit of his stomach. He knew all the reasons why he would never stop feeling it and he believed every one of them. He truly did.

At that moment anyway.

And therein lay the problem.

A month later, he still believed them. He embraced them and yet the concern that it was only a matter of time hung over him like a black cloud. It made no sense. He searched himself and looked into a mirror and said things aloud to confirm that the desire to feel this thing was immutable and yet…

A year went by and still his first thought when he woke up and the last thought he had before going to sleep was this feeling. How he didn’t want it to end. How he absolutely positively did not.

But he worried that one day it would.

Then one day he stepped out in front of a bus and was killed.

Getting run over by a bus, while a convenient metaphor I’ll grant you, actually happens much more than people think and in no way is a sign of lazy writing. Dozens and dozens of people every year. Year in and year out. One minute walking around fine and the next squished under a bus.

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness”

-Friedrich Nietzsche

• –Hazy Shade of Winter lyrics © Paul Simon Music