This essay was originally written in January 2017.
Between existing and exiting lies something.
Lies a simple letter; “S” slithers and weaves the fine line between life and death, between being and not.
Something, something encapsulates that soporific, summer sunshine that somehow makes even the most dizzying rollercoaster titled ‘LIFE’ seem languidly calming, a drifting canoe ride down the creek behind your childhood home. The rays kiss you in a way no human can, pulling the sinuous curve of your lips upward and time flows like molasses, the moments just as sweet.
Something is the is the oh-my-GOD mind-shattering sex with your lover–a little bit devilishly wrong, yet oh so right parts synchronizing like gears, grinding. The sex that leaves you breathless and your thoughts in tatters, struggling for composure amidst the euphoric rush of endorphins flooding your capsized self.
It is the sesame seeds on your toasted morning bagel on Tuesdays, the way they almost burst with that nutty, roasted flavor tumbling in your mouth with shmear. The way one of the seeds, split, gets stuck between your slight snagtooth on the left, forcing you to stop mid-chew and muscle your tongue up in there, evicting the unwelcome tenant. The force doesn’t quite work, so you send up a more authoritative figure, your finger. You nail it.
That something is the Sunday you lost Sam, ironically and not a deeply gray day, and the feelings awashing over you rivaling the darkness of the heavy storm clouds. The profundity of the sadness depletes your oxygen, because you needed Sam, too, to breathe, and your attempts to suppress that horrific memory fail most days. You still try.
Something is S P A C E ! Black, vast, infinite, unknown, yet you never could quite shake your affinity to astronomy, because how could you not smile when stars wink and twinkle and rain upon you? Space was your blanket on balmy nights and your downfall on the nights that lacked light of the not-photon sense. Space’s blackness sucked you up over the event horizon and, in an instant, nothing meant anything. How can you–you–even matter when every thing and not-thing lacks significance?
Something is the spiral into that space, where only you reside, alone and lonely. You exist, yes, but why? Why take up space when it is easier to exit and surrender to not being here or anywhere? You search for an answer because you seek truth, but denial-lies sneak in, always. You slouch toward the ‘EXIT’ sign.
But something pulls you back–a feeble force in direct opposition the the conviction of your final step. Something is a single ray of starlight, off to your right, and suddenly it clicks that stars and sun and something and everything is part of space and lightness and darkness coexist. That tenuous line between existing and exiting you were just toeing melts because something is there to take its place. It swells with all the stupendous, silly, surreptitious, sentimental things and ideas and memories that make you, you, and your body and brain are reeling, savoring each sigh of air. You are alive.