Across the Pass

This is how it goes - one minute you're on top and the next minute you're tumbling down, your butt a bruise, your head smashing ground. Unfortunately, there is no beginning or end to this story. It just keeps going, never knowing when to stop and grasp a limb for life.

I just had a thought about old people. For me, the idea of old people arrives early every morning and does not leave until the wee hours of night. Maybe this is a problem, though. It is not a Harold and Maude like problem, but more of a thought-consumption problem. With my mind so worried about the important old people in my life perishing, I leave little room to worry about the important young people in my life diminishing.

I hit my head hard last night on a frozen mountain and my first thought was - I could die. I'm 23 and I could die so damn easily. Perhaps at the same time, my friend and my mom's best friend's daughter was smashing her head against a steering wheel on an icy road in Michigan - an accident that has has left her unconscious and on a ventilator. Perhaps at that same time last night, my older brother was drinking himself to death, again. As I tried to go to sleep last night to the sound of drunken teammates stumbling back-and-forth across the living room, I could only think of the old people. They are those who have made it through the relentless pulse of this punishing life. I myself am tired. I am tired. I honestly believe that I do everything that I can in this life. Sometimes I mess-up, but I am human. I moved 3000 miles away and I still cannot sleep, because of drunken stumbling. I still awake to the stale smell of beer and phone calls from my mother. In the youthful chambers in my mind, I wish I could be upstairs, drinking and laughing and just being a "normal person." I suppose this is the life I have been given, so all I can do is continue to push forward until I can no longer stand. I might go to Belize or Nicaragua, but it's never going to stop and I guess that's okay for now.