I’m standing here.
In the rain.
There’s flashes of lightning all around me.
And yet I’m standing outside.
I’m standing in the driveway, torrents of rain pouring down over me, soaking my jacket and my shirt. Water’s running over my head, through my hair. It feels like I’m standing in a shower, only I can’t ever remember showering in the dark.
The stars and moon are blocked by the clouds, the lights from the town and our neighbor obscured by the rain. The only light comes from my house. The porch light is on, and behind the pocket of light it casts I can hear my family, almost feel the heat. I’m cold and wet, yet the light, and the sounds, and the warmth, don’t call to me. They don’t push me away either, they’re simply … there. I don’t feel like I belong there, and yet there’s nowhere else to go.
That’s not what I mean. There are lots of places I could go, places where they’d welcome me, give me a chance to dry off, to warm up, get something hot to eat, maybe even a drink. But it would be the same there as it is standing here. I don’t belong, and I have to find my place somewhere. The funny thing is that it doesn’t call out to me. In the past, I’ve been guided by these internal urgings and external promptings from others that lead me down the path I’ve traveled. And now the path doesn’t branch off, it simply ends, stops dead in the darkness. I don’t know if I should turn left, or right, or keep going straight. Maybe I should turn around and go back, but that isn’t a real path, it’s not an option. The closest thing to going back is to look that way.
And so here I am looking back, in the rain and the past. I like what I see. I think I do. I regret some choices, but overall I don’t regret where I am, or how I got here … I think. I worked hard sometimes, and other times I just let it all slide and had fun. Sometimes I did nothing. I think I chose the right approach at the right times. Maybe I didn’t, I don’t know. It’s a game we play with ourselves, ‘What If?’
What if I didn’t let her get away? Or her? What if I or we had pushed just a little harder, and beat him or her or them? I dig a little hole in the driveway, scraping away at the mud and gravel. It fills almost instantly with water. Or maybe it wasn’t instantly. As I mull over my past time flows back and forth. The years roll back on each other, and the minutes and hours flash forward in seconds as I struggle to recall specific events, minor and major in my past. Some minor ones become major.
“Pray for the blue exam!” That’s a minor one turned major. I don’t know if she (I think it was a girl) even remembers telling me, actually us, that. That one shouldn’t be there. It doesn’t eat away at me, that’s too strong a term for it. It stings once in a while, the imaginary pain as you run your finger over a scar long healed, that you don‘t even remember getting. It’s not like I asked her for help. I’m not the only one she told. But still, when they told me my mark, I felt like I had cheated somehow.
Still, it was more than just my test that won me that award. The little voice in my head whispers at me; “But they said it was so close, you and a couple others. What if you hadn’t taken the easy one? Where would you be now?” Yet another ‘what if’ is added to the pile. I’d still be here, I know that. Same as if I hadn’t let her go. But then I wouldn’t have been with her. Let her go, who am I kidding? I told her to go. I didn’t let her, I made her. What is it that she saw in me? Was it the same thing that she saw, or something else? Why did she let me go?
I know that one.
Again, that one’s not my fault. What if I had tried harder? I could have made it work. We could have made us work. What if? I’d still be here, because she’s gone. Nothing could have made her stay, not me, that’s for sure. It all comes back, I’d still be here. Then again another one pops up, maybe I wouldn’t be here without her, I might be with there with her. I had the choice, and I dropped my application. I knew about her application. I knew she’d get in and I knew she’d take it. Did I even think about that? What if I’d thought about that? Then I’d be somewhere else, but maybe not with her. And if I wasn’t with her, then why would I want to be there?
So, where to next? Another hole turns into another puddle, and I pull my hood up. It’s about as dry as the twin puddles, but for some reason I think that it’ll help clear my thoughts as the little pelting drops are shed off. Now I have a five pound cotton water bag on my head. Much better/. It could be worse, I say that all the time, a cliché of cynical hope.
“How?” someone always asks.
“It could be raining.” is my typical response.
Well, it sure is raining now. I glance at my watch, I’ve been out here for an hour now. Nothing has changed, I’m still wet, still without a place to belong, still playing What If and loosing. I’m not sure how you win, if you can win. I know how I could have lost much worse than I did. It’s easy to think of the bad things, how when you lucked out for the best, the worst could’ve happened.
So if I’d really lost, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be dead, somewhere, buried six feet under, or maybe my ashes scattered to the four corners on the four winds. But where would I be if I had won?
Inside where it’s warm and dry, I decided wisely. If I had any good sense that’s where I’d be now. If I’d had the good sense to say yes to her, say no to her, say ‘Yeah let’s do this,’ to them or ‘No, I don’t want to,’ to them then I wouldn’t be pondering my choices if they’d been the right ones, I wouldn’t be standing in the rain wondering. It’s too late now, experience is the hardest teacher. First you get tested, and then you learn the lesson. Too bad no one ever told me where the test ends and the lesson begins. I think I’m still writing the test, and using the new questions to help me double check the old answers.
Maybe I should be using the old answers to answer the new questions.
Old or new, I can’t read the bloody questions if the paper’s wet.
I’m going inside.
August 12th, 2002. 12:44 AM.