Howdy.
I can't really say that it has been ages because that would be saying the same thing I say in every other blog post. So I won't say it...
This post was going to be about something else. I'm sure you are all dying to know about the summer (or are you? I'm not entirely sure anyone is still reading these...), but that's just going to have to wait until another time because... the thing is...
I almost (sorta) died today.
I was driving home this afternoon when I had to stop at a traffic light. I was the first car in the row of cars waiting for green. It was hot and I was a little distracted with picking a song to listen to (the car was, after all, not in motion). Before choosing a song I instinctively looked up as the light was switching to green, so I let go of the brake and stepped gently on the accelerator.
It all happened so fast.
As I was going under the metal structure of the traffic lights, I noticed a blue object from the corner of my left eye. It was a car going at full speed, coming out of nowhere. It didn't really register though. I didn't react quickly enough. I just kept my hands on the steering and continued stepping on the gas pedal.
My lack of reaction saved me.
From my rear-view mirror I saw the blue car crumple like paper into a white SUV that was right behind me, a mere 10 yards away. There was a loud boom that rippled through the air as pieces of debris floated around. The small car, going at full speed, managed to push the SUV a good 10 yards off the side of the road, then proceeded to give a full 360-degree-spin-around.
I watched the whole thing as my car moved away from the collision slowly, my mind unable to react. It was like watching a movie in slow motion. People immediately got out of their cars to go help. I kept driving until I lost sight of them.
Then my soul came back into my body. I started shaking, blinking, breathing heavily, cursing, crying. I thought about pulling over on the side of the road. I started slowing down. There was nowhere to stop. Just go home, I told myself. Get home. I picked up the phone. I called my best friend. Crying, cursing, shaking, breathlessness.
Nothing had actually happened to me. Yet...
Yet it was going to. It would have. It was going to be me. A second, maybe two, made the difference.
Why them and not me?
It was a strange reality-check, considering the things I was (and have been) thinking: If I were to go tomorrow, what would I leave behind? What would have been the purpose of my life? And constantly feeling like the answers to those questions were disappointing and frustratingly unsatisfying.
But those questions, they've always been around. When I was a little girl, I mean LITTLE, I would go every day up to my mother's room to check if she was breathing during her nap. I would stand there and watch her chest rise and fall and breathe with relief because I didn't have to think about "what will I do now?" Mortality has always had a terrifying grip of me. Probably in part due to my vivid imagination and also because of my natural disposition to pessimism.
So I think about these things. What would happen if tomorrow I'm not here? It's silly and I'm sure people wonder that all the time then quickly dismiss the thought, as if it was bad to think about it or as if it was actually inviting Death in. But I dwell on things, so I dwell on this, and most of the time it brings me incredibly low.
But today, faced with the fact that this car would have hit right on my driver door and would have probably crushed me to death, my mind started racing with these questions:
If it was over right now, what would your legacy be?
The initial response is a dry "nothing". I wasted my talents in an unfulfilling career. My writing never amounted to much. I wasn't a particularly benevolent person, nor a good daughter, sister, teacher. I didn't do anything remarkable. I complained a lot. I cursed waaay too much. I felt sad the majority of the time.
But there was a flash of lightning, a light bulb turned on in the dense dark. I had no success according to the world. Heck, I had no success according to God (I am far, far, FAR away from being close to my saintly role models). The only thing I did sort of right was... to love.
I've loved.
I've loved until my bones have ached and my joints have snapped.
I've loved until my heart has sank on the ground.
I've loved until it's broken my soul and has made me questioned if I'm wrong.
I've loved because I'm sick, insane, incorrigibly stubborn.
I've loved with the rage and the fire and the storm.
I've loved with all the tenderness and care and meticulousness of a poem.
I've loved ephemeral like the stars and mighty like a meteor shower.
I've loved in all seasons and in every hour.
I've loved intensely and fiercely and silently and pathetically.
I've loved against exhaustion, reason, indifference and practicality.
I've loved until the wound gushes no more blood.
I've loved until numbness has dried up the flood.
I've loved with stomping feet and held up fists and fits of laughs.
I've loved with sunshine in my eye but also well into the night.
I've loved so hard, so rash, so tough, so fast, so natural
That I've yet to stop and think twice before I'm quickly falling down.
That's all I've done in my life. I've loved sports with the intensity worthy of a stroke (if anything that's always been the way I imagined I'd go). I've loved football like one loves one's first love (forever). I've loved my mother until wishing to go first so I don't have to live without her. I've love food like couples love in rom-coms. I've loved this world: with its colors and its textures and its shades of wrong. I've loved seeing and hearing and touching and tasting in every place I go.
But most importantly, I've loved people. People who have been all sorts of vicious and cruel and selfish. People who are loyal and kind and lovely. Both sorts of people who are easy to love. I've loved them all imperfectly and tragically so. I wish I would have loved them like my God expected me to do.
My blood, they've gotten the worst from me.
My friends, the best there is.
And men... ah yes, men...
If I was going Home today it would be to meet the only one of them worth anything to me (but Purgatory might be a scale for an indefinite period of time).
And I'd go finally having fallen in love with myself. At long last. Despite the deterioration of age, of stress, of heartbreak and tiredness. I'd watch my body from above and behold its lovely form one last time, and be sorry to see it so torn apart in that crash. Because the scales in my eyes have fallen off, and I've beheld the beauty of creation. Who I am, who I've been, it's all a masterpiece. It took me long enough to figure that out.
So what if life's been rubbish (which it hasn't)? What if life has been a waste of time (which it hasn't)? I've loved, and I've been loved beyond anything I could ever deserve. By you, and you, and you. In an equally imperfect, beautiful way. So I thank you, and farewell.
Except... I'm not dead.
God decided today was not the day. Instead, today is the day I say:
I
Love
You
I'm not going anywhere.
-Cris
