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To those charting their own paths and those who make it possible for others
sometimes, it’s impossible to understand something. Sometimes things don’t happen for a reason.
There is nothing to figure out, there is no how or why. Sometimes things just happen.
Real men don’t press flowers into their books. They don’t spill their insecurities to their friends. Daniel certainly doesn’t tell me about all the things that happened to him in his past. Real men suck it up and change the subject until their hearts wither to dust inside them.
There are a million pieces of us scattered through my memory, moments tiny and insignificant to everyone else in the world except for me.
Even if I hadn’t known you, I would have stopped and looked back. I would’ve introduced myself.”
Why didn’t I just tell her exactly how I felt? What kept stopping me in the moment? So what if she doesn’t feel the same way? Am I such a coward that I’d rather not know?
These cracked Antarcticans have never lived through a revolution before. Their country is barely a few decades old. They have no idea how fragile this entire system is. Everything always seems like it’s going fine until suddenly, one day, it’s not.
No matter how strong the country, no matter how invincible one might seem … there is always a tipping point. Always something that can pull the entire house down.
As we rise higher and the scene below fades behind the clouds, I find myself wondering if
there is ever a time in history of peace, if we can ever find a way to escape the cycle of destruction we bring upon ourselves.
They don’t call it the Civil War. There had already been one that split the nation before, hundreds of years ago, during a time when the enslavement of human beings was legal based on nothing but the color of one’s skin. There is an entire room dedicated to that, to the unified, sinister America before we existed.
Maybe the United States was only ever united for some. Maybe this place has always been a dystopia.
June has adjusted better than any of us. But even so, she’s afraid of the past. Just like I am. We may not be the same people we used to be. Maybe we’ll never find our way back to that place. But we bear the same scars from the same old wounds.
Some pasts can’t be left behind. They must be fought.
“It is not weakness to open your heart. It does not make you less of a man to ask for help. To turn to someone when you’re vulnerable. To need a shoulder to cry on. You don’t have to bear the weight of anything by yourself.
I cry because I’m grateful that we still, in spite of everything, have all found each other. Because sometimes, broken pieces find a way to make a new whole.
You rarely regret the things you do, but always the things you don’t.
But I can’t just pretend that my past never happened, either. The comfort of not remembering is an artificial thing.
“We can’t save the world,” she says softly. “But we still try anyway,” I say. “One day at a time.”
June’s answer drifts up into the night air and echoes across the cityscape, one of millions of things happening in each of our lives, the small steps you take that are invisible to everyone else in the world. The steps that, nevertheless, matter the most. Yes. Always. Forever.
