Man, Machine, Mortality

The Year of Fall

Is it wrong to ask if there would ever be a chance? I need you to tell me the truth. That you'll fall for someone like I fell for you, but at the end of your descent someone is waiting to catch you. Down Brad or Ethan or Jake or Evan or Ryan or Justin waiting with open arms and a full heart. But not me. And I need you to know that as I fall with my lead-coated heavy,  heart that I'm okay with not having a net at the bottom. That as I plunged from that cliff, I knew the risk I was taking. I knew that you wouldn't be there waiting, but I prayed for something to catch me. As my fall reaches terminal velocity it appears as though you were telling the truth. That waiting for me is a bed of nails and a sea of my own thoughts. When I hit that floor I'll take the chance to think of all that I missed. Luckily it was only a year of opportunity. A year of highs mingled with occasional lows; a year of fortunes brought to my eyes by another. I still don't know who or what pushed me off that cliff to begin with, but the first thing I remember is seeking that smile of yours. Like a siren song, it drew me tight and erased my fears and worries. Next was your eyes. I thought I was the only one who could light them up. I quickly realized my faulty assumption. Your hair and face came soon after. They entered my mind, bound it in rope, and held it hostage. I had been familiar with your inner she'll for a year before I fell, so noticing that had already been a process I was well acquainted with. There are more than seven billion people on this planet, yet at any given moment I feel like I'm the only one to have fallen by your doing. Once again, a faulty assumption. See, I convinced myself that you were different because I had never seen someone like you. Other guys convinced themselves of the same thing. I called you beautiful ( although I had never called anyone else beautiful), and I can't help but wonder how many guys say the same thing. How many of them even mean it? Then I get mad at myself for not being what you want, and I blame myself for my descent. I wonder if the guy you fall in love with will love you for the right reasons. I wonder if someone who can see their end even has a reason to fall in love. So I enjoy the view of my demise, seeing the ground expand before me. All the while I see visions of future possibilities-- for me, for you, for those I love and those I cherish. But not for anyone else. For those I know I see thousands of ends, hundreds of beginnings. I see us, tearing each other apart and is building each other up. I see what I want to see, and repress the fates that leave me falling. I refuse to accept the reality around me-- I am falling and I need a parachute. I depended on you, telling myself that you would be there to support me. Unsurprisingly whenever I open my eyes I'm still alone. I can't even hold flower petals without somehow thinking of you. That's the most annoying thing to me. Something as beautiful as a flower tainted by the thought of something like me and something like you endeavoring in something as tainted as a false love. You could never love me because that's not how love works. It's not love if only one person feels something. I reach out to you sometimes about how I feel. How I feel lost, how I feel alone and too sad to change my course. You don't pay much attention. That's even more annoying than not being able to see flowers. I wrote you paragraphs about how in running toward some eventual hole, and how I don't know what to do because I can't stop and appreciate the beauty of things around me. All you said is that I think too much. And that is why I do t believe in love. I can't be in love with someone who doesn't love me back. Love doesn't make me write thousands of words at night about how I'm dying a slow and painful death, visible only to my inner eye. Love doesn't make me forget about God. Love doesn't make me stare into nothingness, wishing I was someone else or that I had another chance to say something differently. Live is supposed to hurt in a good way. It's supposed to be mutual. I'm supposed to look at you without regret, whether or not we end up together, and know that you're still amazing despite both of our shortcomings. But instead I worked out this elaborate plan. A plan to fall, and wait expectantly for you to catch me before my demise. What I didn't count on is human nature. "Out of sight, out of mind." I spend most of my time with you feeling out of sight so I'm not entirely sure why I assumed this would be any different.

While I fall and wait for the realistic impact of the ground I'll think about something else for once.