When it falls...

Or, maybe I should say, “When I fall…”

I fall to shit. Never have I experienced a fall that ended in a graceful landing. And most of the time, when I fall, I fall like a boozy kitten on catnip. It isn’t peaceful, and unlike a cat, not usually funny. I had this entertaining thought that perhaps turning a year older, that I would increase in grace and stability. Alas, it is not so. I am still me. I am the same me I was at 28. But this isn’t just about me falling from grace, which I feel as though, at times, I am perpetually doing. This is about life, and what little I know of it.

When I set out to write, I set out to create something that will perhaps be about me, because in Anne of Green Gables, Gilbert tells Anne to write what she knows, but I also set out to create something that rings of universal truth. Because, if I spend my time writing about me, what good is it for anyone? What good is my life for anyone else? To be a teacher? To be an example? Perhaps, but life is so much bigger than myself, that if I didn’t seek to explore the very basics of life that plague us all what then is the point?
So, here is my universal truth: life can be shit! Shit that we create, obviously not the feces kind, shit that we inherit, shit that we stumble upon, and even shit that is thrust upon us. So, this is about the muck at the end of that great fall that catches us, yet renders us filthy and sometimes unfortunately still alive so as to make us pick up every broken piece and force a mosaic out of shards.

I have been 29 for 1 day. In this one day, I have driven 454 miles, give or take, and have experienced a gambit of emotions that have made me feel as though I am falling, once again, down into the muck and mire.
First:

Apology...it was a simple pejorative word that was blasted at me like a cold, mind-numbing splash of water. Intended, perhaps, for the purpose of knocking my feet out from under me. But this word, spoken out of pain and hurt and directed toward me, was something that I spent a matter of moments contemplating. Is it necessary to provide a apologies for something we never intended to do that caused pain? Is it necessary to shoulder such massive undertakings with said apologies? I knew, in this case, that to offer an apology to this dear friend would only render me an ass, but what could I do, but do it. So I did it. I tried. I probably failed.

Then:
Love...the most grandiose idea that shakes and demolishes the strongest of persons. But there it was, in a text, written in a not so subtle message of honesty and clarity. Unlike the first encounter, this one left me numb and hurt. I was no longer the one who was causing the pain, I was the one who was pained. And it burned. This word burned so deep that I still feel the effects like blisters from one day, almost a year ago, that stole my rose coloured outlook of the world. That night my naivete was torn away.

Finally: 
Death...we know it, and we hate it. We hate it so much we never get used to it, because it ceases to ever be a comforting idea or reality. Oh, we try to deal with it. We try and we end up failing, even if we fail at three in the morning when all our defenses are down and we weep for the dead who we talk about so openly and gaily in the daytime. We will fail with death, and yet in our failure, we deal. And how ironic that truly is. But we must deal. Yesterday, we lost a soul so real and beautiful that even though it didn’t catch us unaware, it still hurt...hurts. However, though not still breathing the air this side of eternity, she is alive. She will live in her favorite flower; she will live in the sweet smell of candles burning; she will live in the broken hearts of those she left to fend off this life.

Apologies, confessions of love, and death. So different but all ways to hurt or be hurt. And in this great big world that keeps spinning, despite the fact that we fall, they will be there tomorrow. The lingering effects of these things will be there for us to deal with in the morning, and deal we will. Deal--I will.