Cold
We all weather storms. It’s a cliché. But it’s a cliché because it’s such a good analogy. I don’t care. It’s my blog. I’m using it.
Saturday night I weathered one, but five people in the crowd with me did not get the opportunity.
It doesn’t feel right writing about my fear in this experience when I got to leave that concert and they didn’t. But since it is all I can think about lately, I can write of nothing else. Since I feel so lost and muddled, I can do nothing but write. It feels crass. But I guess I don’t care about that either.
We were not in direct danger. We were stuck up high behind thousands of people. It was absolutely no big deal if you felt you could trust the weather that had just taken lives right in front of you. I looked for exits. I estimated my luck in getting through the crowd. I used logic and reason that was proven insufficient. I sat down and knew it wasn’t my call.
That was a big deal. I think everything is my call. It’s hard to know for a cold, hard fact that you either will or will not be spared by the terrible, swift sword of a capricious storm.
My brain kicked in to protect me from this fact. It was so enormous that I could not take it in within the few minutes that I either did or did not have. I felt a stillness and coolness in my center that is foreign to my makeup. And it has not left me yet.
My husband wants me to be fun and perky again and I have no doubt that someday I will be. But it won’t be today.
People at work don’t take Saturday seriously. They are going about their lives. It feels offensive. That’s illogical, but, I don’t care.
I would have thought I would have hugged my kids tighter and felt everything more intensely. That would have made more sense and would have made for better writing. But I am holding everything more loosely. I feel apathy and numbness down to my newly, cool center.
I understand enough to know that it won’t be long. I thought after I was given a second chance to live after cancer that I would always carry that gratitude with me. But I’m not sure I made it a year.
Regardless, I feel at this moment that that horrible, cold, dirt and terror-filled gust blew something into me that just won’t go.
