My Fear of Heights
As the last bit of dust finally settled I watched headlights travel the nearly naked streets of a tired city. There was a numbness, the kind that can only come when all facets of self are at such a desperate impasse, and it was spreading its way across my worried mind. Haunted by too many apologies, driven into a corner by too much compromise, I’d been traveling too many tired roads these days myself.
The feeling came upon me by mistake, a momentary misstep in conclusions and I quickly found myself wading through a lifetime of refusals and retries. I felt alien in my own skin; lost somewhere between the face in the mirror and the voice within, I struggled to find where I fit in. My mind retraced my past efforts to redefine my name and the time I spent chasing the dreams that I’d never hear from again. Experience had taught me that those moments were what made me unique, like the tangled branches of some aging tree; yet I still felt left behind, waiting for the right chance or the right time.
There were too many terrific stories to tell to claim that it was wasted time; but truthfully we were wasted, most of the time. We developed an addiction to the moment, to movement, to constant motion, desired nothing less than the sincerest of emotions; but when we found ourselves, adrift in this huge ocean, someone passed along this notion that we might be lost. We started wondering if we should’ve crissed instead of crossed, maybe paid more attention to direction instead of just meandering off.
Then I saw them, dancing next to the water, as if nothing really mattered. The nearly naked children of summer out laughing at the way I lived my life. Chuckling at the demons I chased as if they had long ago banished theirs without a fight. In the last few minutes of daylight that remained they only chased each other. Dressed in whatever was left after a relentless summer day, they were the explorers of simpler things. I found myself daydreaming about what it might be like to sit waiting with them for the rain to come; sharing storm stories as if survival was something I was doing for fun.
Tonight we’re just trees blowing in the wind, building and breaking ourselves limb by limb, reaching towards some heavenly fate with our arms stretched thin. Every day waking up, silently wondering if we’ve gotten any closer, simultaneously worried about the prospect of getting older, and restlessly bearing the worst of the weight on our burdened shoulders, we keep climbing higher. Atop my roof, later that night, I considered myself for a while and the concerns inherent in such great heights.
This is where I chose to make my stand. This is how I chose to fight. Whether I win or lose, it’s the battles I choose, that make this thing I’m doing into a life. I’ve poured everything I’ve got into becoming something that I’m not because I haven’t forgot where I came from. I still see the stains of my parent’s blood and sweat on anything given to me, because without their success and without their regret, I simply would have never been me.
I’m envious, sometimes, of those whose days move like candle wax, melting into each other as they anonymously pass, but I believe that I was born with a task. Nothing divine, though I’ve questioned various Gods from time to time; more simply an urgency to see to it that my name isn’t wasted, that no chance goes without chase and no truth is left until it’s faced.
When you climb for such heights, to someday stand amongst your grandest dreams and not have to fight, you’re bound to fall far more than seems right, far further than what seems fair. But just to walk in the shadow of our dreams, to me it seems, even if it’s just a journey and I never really get there, hell, at least I was headed somewhere.
Thank you for this.