Before a Fall

There are some prolonged moments in time where I simply sit in awe and hope and fear, wondering where I’m going to be when the moment ends. These “moments” are sometimes very short--less than a minute, less than an hour--and are sometimes long, as long as days or even a week or two.
I’m finding myself in the grip of one of those moments tonight. I feel like I could cry at any moment, but that if I do, something in this moment will be broken, and I’ll never find what I’m inadvertently looking for within it.

I’m almost certain that I’m going to look back on this in the morning and paint it a bunch of over-dramatic philosophical nonsense, but right now it’s more solid than that.

I’m sitting here with a novel behind on its word count, a social life that’s minimal, eyes that don’t want to focus on the computer screen, and hands that want to find my phone in my lap and dial the number I just hung up with, to ask my older brother to stay up just a little longer to keep all the demons away.

I’m thinking of a million other different things as well, the most prevalent being that my friend, who I’ve called my brother now for years, could maybe give me a chance, if I tried hard enough... or if something out there took a liking to me.

This train of thought is dangerous and probably bad, but honestly, I measure the people I meet by him anyway. I’m most likely going to end up single for most of my life, and it will be because no one I meet will measure up to the immeasurable depth of potential and love and hope and humanness that I see in that boy. And I do see that in him, all of it. Every time I talk to him, I hear more of it in his voice, and every time I hang up the phone, which has been happening frequently in the past couple of weeks, I find myself wishing just a little bit harder that I could have him, just for a while. Or someone like him.

But that’s silly, isn’t it? Because everyone knows there isn’t anyone like ani.

And so I sit, torn between things, hung in a balance that I don’t dare disturb, but that I know will topple me eventually, probably into the cloudy waters of self-loathing rather than onto the shores of possibility. And I’ll fall into them unwillingly but drink of them with a thirst that I could wait to slake if I wanted, but that, in the end, is best satisfied when I am unhappy with myself.

I just want somebody to come up to me and tell me to forget about it, and ask me to dance.

O'Children by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds