A Fleeting Thought

On Growing Pains

I had a vision just now, and my body went numb with it. It was a sort of epiphany that came out of the fog. Out of the clouds of today's sky upon the breezes that come from the ocean all the way over the mountains, across the planes, through the hills bringing the soft cool rain. As well as the roaring thunder that shakes me to the core, a product of a natural event so beautiful it is hotter than the sun. The lightning.
I had a vision of this very day long ago. In a way it was all to familiar. A sense of deja vu washed over me like water. Anointing my senses in a bath of radient light. All at once it opened my heart chakra. A smile came across my face.
"I'm not alone." I sighed, "Everything will be okay."
It did not matter that we were five thousand dollars in debt with a bail bondsman, that our house had holes in the floor, cockroaches, and a floor that we didn't care if we ashed on. It did not matter that we were infested with flees, and some days we couldn't eat, and that I hadn't showered in so long that my hair had started to matte in the back. All of the sudden it didn't matter that I was stuck in a state that I did not like. A state that targeted me just because I'm from California. A state that thinks I should believe in only one God. And God forbid I don't eat meat. Even if it's too much to afford. They teach their children that science is blasphemy, and that life should come one way, handed down to you.
I had been unhappy for months already. I called it just one too many mornings, and a thousand miles behind. I had meant to only stop here for a couple of months before I moved on to West Virginia, or Maine. Yes, Maine is where I ultimately intended to go. I was going to take up a job as a camp councilor, Harper was going to work on an ocean farm. Somewhere along the way life creeped up on us and we lost our freedom. It seemed we couldn't gather enough money to break even, let alone get anywhere new. We would either have to buy cat food, or ciggarettes, or gasoline. Eventually the urge came to settle, at least for the winter, and we had been kicked out of our friends house where we had been renting a room on the cheep.
We ended up getting an apartment, getting evicted, and finally settling in our decrepped trailer house in a quiet part of a bad neighborhood for another year.
That's where I met a friend, a woman across the street in her early thirties. I had lived across the street from her for months before I met her. It turns out she backed into my ditch and got stuck. It didn't make much of a noise, but I heard it. Harper and I got the towing straps and pulled her out with my truck, so no one would even know. After that we became good friends. She sort of reminded me of how I imagined myself in my early thirties. I was only about twenty one years old at the time. She seemed to always be aware that she was exactly where she needed to be, but still striving for more. Still looking forward into the future. She owned a nice house, her own business, and had a beautiful daughter.
She came over one late afternoon in May, we had both been struggling. Both on hard times. But I knew everything was going to be okay, for both of us. It's just the turbulent tides of life.