Scenarios

I have this really desolate scenario that I fear will play out in my future one day and it goes like this:

        Well, prefacing is necessary probably…hold on:

I have a problem with “never.”

I can’t handle conclusively never seeing someone again or talking to them again or whatever. Effectively, I’m afraid of people falling out of my life if I ever cared about them at all. That’s not to say people I’ve cared about haven’t fallen out of my life, they have, it’s saying that when it’s happening in front of me—if the falling apart is happening in front of me— and I can’t stop it, that’s when I have a problem. 

Ok, back to the desolate scenario:

 So this is my desolate scenario that applies to anyone I may have once loved or something. (“Or something” is necessary because I’m incapable of making that conclusive statement)

At some point in my future, a few years hence, I’m somewhere in the north, grad school, law school whatever, for artistic purposes we’ll call it law school, and we’ll make the other player a ‘him’. 

I’m walking down the street in freezing New England weather, stacks of court briefs in my arms, bundled up, head down to avoid the wind, briskly headed toward my favorite local coffee shop to warm up while I peruse my law school homework (is there a more sophisticated term for that?)

And so I’m rushing in toward the warmth, because my breaks are few and far between, and I’m looking down to protect my tender face from the icy gusts of wind, and because of this nonobservationist stance, I suddenly run into something very warm and very solid.

Of course, it’s another head-down, brisk-walker, laden with his own school papers and as we collide, our papers fly everywhere in the wind.

It’s that typical trite trope, that nauseating romantic comedy meet-cute, and we giggle politely and offer hastened and half-hearted and haphazard apologies as we help the other gather up strewn papers, both of us chuckling in that amicable yet reserved for strangers way…

and as we’re doing this our eyes suddenly meet and for both of us, in what seems to be a fated moment (though the other does not know it), there is a brief flicker of overwhelming recognition, like maybe something from a dream, like someone from a long time ago, someone from the past, someone I might have once loved (or something)...

But the notion dances barely beyond the grasp of perception and before it condenses into a real thought, a real meaningful thought, we each shake the silly idea off, smile to ourselves at the silly little idea that we might know this stranger…

We get our coffee and go opposite ways. 

And that’s that. 

But later, much later, when we’re both miles apart, we’ll think about the incident in the hazy in-between time right before sleep. We’ll both look out the window into a black, starless sky, straining for something we once had; straining our eyes to see the stars that we know should be there. 

~fin~

That’s what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of losing people. I’m afraid of being lost to people. I’m afraid that everything will fall apart and unravel and I’ll never know what something could have been. 

I just want to hold onto everything and everyone forever. But if life means anything at all, it means that you can’t have everything. In fact, you can hardly have anything you want. All you have is what life leaves you with, and that’s what you deal with. 

So it goes.