A Broken Path
"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”
-Jack Kerouac, "On The Road"
The sad lap steel of a song from another room irks us and fills our souls with a choky mirk - telling us simply that we will know pain, and it will sneak up on us when we least expect it. And we sink in it.
What is that feeling when someone leaves the room and you can't catch your breath? Because you know how special they are in your space, but you don't actually know how factually special they are until they are gone - and really gone.
What happened to living like mad lovers? What happened to being fraught with passion and aching with a spiritual ascension that enlightened and frightened all of your being? When did everything become so boring and so autopilot?
I've ventured down a broken path. I look at others, and I see a straighter line to the way they have lived. Bank accounts. Smart investments. Houses. Vehicles. Kids. Dogs. Cats. Condos. Boats. All the trimmings.
I've put myself before others. I've sought my own pursuits when I should have shut up for the greater good of a combined effort and silenced my insatiable narcissism.
I've been a target. As someone who has always found ease in forming relationships, I've been singled out and attacked by others who covet that ability and who found my love for people as unsettling and threatening.
I've seen a lover become a stranger. And that, my friends, is one of the shittiest, most broken hearted ventures a man can ever endure.
But in the end, I have done the things that most could never even fathom to dream about. I've roamed. I've seen the trappings of the east and the west and the north and the south. I've reconnected with lost friends who have made my soul jump. I've made new friends with a crop of kids who reinvigorated my whole being like a dusty church organ pumping back to melodic life. I've kept the ties and kept up the talk when others have hit the bricks and let the sadness walk.
My path may be broken, but it has made all the difference in the repair of who I am becoming.
