It wasn't the accents, the hitch in their walk or the noisy spurs of the cowboys in the booth beside me. Perhaps it was the familiar twang of achy breaky heart playing over the radio that nudged me from my early morning nostalgia, flinging me back into my body that sat in the small booth of the "downtown" ihop in Wichita Falls Texas. Wichita as in "you aren't in Kansas anymore Dorothy", falls as in... there isn't a scene of cascading water in sight, Texas as in... Texas. By that I mean you could throw a rock across some creek a couple miles North and hit the even dustier state of Oklahoma.
Prior to last nights apocalyptic thunderstorm, 100 degree days had broke every standing heat record known to man and the terrain had literally forgotten how to absorb. Instead of the hint of fresh soaked earth, the air laid heavy with moisture between the endless sky and stubborn red clay dirt. All of this made up the world outside my window. My life that I had wound up in, almost by accident it seemed, but for right now I held on to whatever sanity was left in the off white coffee cup in front of me. Desperate to delay my return to planet Texas, I played the acronym game with the letters in front of me. "I-H-O-P"... As in "I hop-e today doesn't kill me", or... It was a short game.
I evaded to sifting through the lives of the strangers around me. The lone taxi driver of the "city" complained of his cold eggs, two medical students taxed over study questions, and my waitress seemed to wish she were anywhere but here. The differences in our affliction were, as she dreamed of places beyond her experience, I longed for places I had vivid memories of. It is a disturbing question to ponder, whether the pain would be less if born blind or to lose your sight after knowing the beauty of color. I would guess that being left with momentary flashes of vibrance as my only company in darkness would leave me unspeakably bitter. I thought of it a moment and returned to my gaze outside the window. Cheesy animations of cheap cartoon ghosts and bats floated around my vision of the barely lit sky. Time was an unclear concept these days, but these bright invasive faces reminded me of my birthday just around the corner. I thought of the last, it's contrast to the one before that and couldn't help but sense the crack between them which my 26th would lie in.
I remembered the horrific weeks and days leading up to my 24th, wishing I were literally never born, and the cruelty of being forced to celebrate another year of life. Within a year I was celebrating my 25th with a new-found appreciation for life. I could not yet determine what this one would encompass, I shrugged it off thinking it was all the same to me now. I no longer existed in this space where time mattered. I only made effort to follow along hoping to not disrupt the tempo of the lives around me. The big and little hands of my life followed something much different. I knew the hope I once had of that ever changing was up to something far greater than chance.
