Into the Fog

Well, Darius, you�ll get to drive through that fog in a few minutes�

I watched the black road. Although the evening was so dreary, my headlights still only emitted enough light to add a vague yellow hue to the road directly in front of my little car. The grayness seeped through it quite effectively, and I found myself wondering if one of the bulbs had burned out. Thoughts of driving through the fog entered my head, and as I was happy to not dwell on any of the other particular thoughts that were swirling in my head at the moment, I mused on what it was like to drive through a thick fog�. I saw myself, driving along at an angry little-bit-above-safe speed. Suddenly, through the mist, I would see a red pair of taillights� pumping my brake and not wishing to skid completely out of control on the wet road, I would fail to slow down quickly enough. I would swerve, avoid the halted car in front of me, and successfully manage to blast through the railing on the opposite side of the road. I would come to in a hospital bed, broken and failing, looking for someone next to the bed� but being unable to recognize any of the faces around me, sobbing, I would proclaim my love to the one I was looking for, the girl named Love, in broken, painful gasps. Somewhere, in my fading consciousness, I would hear a reply� either her love also was true, and she would be there for me, caring, and giving in the way that only true love can. Or my accident would be yet another reason for me to be left, alone, now physically broken as well as mentally insufficient and with a flawed, undesirable personality. The pure truth, fueled by the fear that it would not ever have a chance again to be heard by my living ears, would come from her mouth� and what would it be? Would I hear words of honest encouragement and support, pledging love to look forward to, undying, the only thing worth living for, egging me on to heal and rejoice in sharing life again? A smooth hand in my crippled and shuddering one, pressing me full of life and the will to recover? Or would I hear that other flat voice, the one that meant �I�m only saying this because it�s supposed to be said,� telling me that I was loved but that almost dying in a car accident was not sufficiently drastic an event to change me into an adequate soul mate for life. The squeeze on my hand would be firm, hopeful, encouraging, but not that of a companion�s. It had all been wrong, another red herring, another waste of life, and love, and simply another build up to ultimate pain and loss and loneliness� A door would close in my mind, and I would stop fighting, stop struggling, and stop believing that I would ever be able to find either happiness, purpose, or companionship, all three of which I suspected were the same thing anyway. Death, undoubtedly, would soon follow...

I broke myself out of the morbid reverie, and carefully took the turn up the winding road to my house in the mountains. I had promised myself long ago, and more recently as well, that nothing was worth dying for� no-one, no thing, no reason would ever compel me to take my own life because without that� well, feel free to disagree, but I had always felt that you only get one shot, and when you�re done- you�re done. Worm food, it has been said. And I would not risk death for anything, unless I had fulfilled myself with the achievement of one thing before I died: well, three things actually; happiness, purpose, and companionship.
Or were they one?

No, better not to have such horrid fantasies, because who was to say that I would wake up at all after crashing my car, let alone in a hospital bed? And, as I do not believe in an afterlife, likewise I do not believe that there is anyone to decide if or where I would wake up. No, some things were better not left to God, or chance, because in my view, neither could be trusted� I could only trust myself completely, and that was only by default, as I would rather have someone more� shall we say, dependable? � in whom to place my trust. No, I would trust myself and myself alone with this, and continue with the practice of doing everything possible to not involve myself in a near-fatal automobile accident. This, I concluded to myself, was an excellent policy, and as my little car continued to wind its way up the mountain, my mind turned to other things. I had been working at an unpleasant job for five months after failing out of college� however, it felt more like five years, as I was being paid near-minimum wage to work with people who apparently must have found true happiness in manual labor and decided that it was the path to lifelong fulfillment. Fortunately (or not) I did not share their enthusiasm for the arrangement and care of edible vegetation, and furthermore, I felt that it was a prison sentence� I was forced to live a life I hated, trapped in it by my own actions, looking forward to the end of each day so that I could escape into an electronic world that was getting, frankly, quite boring. As each week went by, I felt more and more despondent and miserable, alternating with a horribly disturbing sense of contentment that occurred at some points when I was actually working at the terrible job� I was fairly certain that this contentment frightened me the most. Self-esteem had never been a problem for me before I left school, but now� well, now it wasn�t merely a problem, it was a foreign concept, I don�t even remember what it was like to have any. However, I had my body and life, and wherever I was or had fallen from, I could always pick myself up and keep going� at least, that�s what I thought before I did fall from somewhere, and came to the abrupt realization that no matter how possible it is to pick yourself up after falling, �keeping going� was not nearly as easy at the lower altitudes. Perhaps the greatest fuel for the continuation and regeneration of my dejected self, and undoubtedly the greatest source of happiness (and purpose and companionship) I had ever felt, was my Love� Love lived way too far away for my liking, but she was everything one could ask for in a love, and of course much, much more besides. As I drove on through the ever-darkening gray evening, I reflected on why I had driven myself (no pun intended) to contemplate self-destructive behavior: Love was going to leave me. Not now, not soon, but sooner than I�d ever like� Love was going to leave me, and then where would I be? Same as I had almost always been before: lonely, nearly purposeless, and exclusively unhappy. But not quite the same� before, I hadn�t reached that state by falling. Falling� ah, falling. Ask any skydiver: the ground can�t kill you, unless you approach it from a great enough distance. I felt my eye twitch, and I wondered if it was a contraction of the inner muscles that heralded further degeneration of my already-impaired vision, or if perhaps I was developing one of those classic neuroses-induced eye tics that heralded degeneration of my sanity. I had fallen once, into this life, and into this job� I was working my way back up, although slowly, crippled by the lack of self-esteem and a multitude of other misunderstood emotions. But I wasn�t working fast enough. And now I was about to fall again. I could even feel the tingle in my spine, that sharp, almost painful tingle that you get the moment you lose your balance� say, if you slip on ice, the tingle that is the beginning of the reflex to catch yourself, even though your hand hasn�t touched anything hot and your knee hasn�t been hit by a hammer. A shot of adrenaline, a touch of pre-panic panic� Reflexes from inside your head. I could feel that tingle, and I knew that I was going to be falling a long way this time, and I could only hope that I would be falling onto a slow trampoline, a trampoline that would�eventually�propel me back up to where I had been before. And I would become We again, and I would be able to continue my quest for true purpose, happiness, and companionship, with Love. This is what I was feeling: the knowledge that I would unavoidably fall, at a predetermined and unalterable point in time, with no idea of what was-or wasn�t- waiting to catch me at the bottom. Now that I had failed yet again at avoiding the �other� thoughts swirling in my head, I felt fairly prepared to arrive at my house, walk past my parents, attempt (unsuccessfully, as usual) to ignore the fact that I very much did not want to live near (let alone with) them, and continue with life as before without any pretense of cheer. Always working my way up, trying to avoid falls, but taking them staunchly (at least to everyone else�s eyes) and eventually getting up and plodding onwards through life. When did the plodding end, and the actual working towards happiness, companionship, and purpose begin in earnest? I knew that it would be impossible without love� Was Love my true love, and did it matter, if she was leaving anyway? What if there was no other perfect love in the world for me, how could I be losing this Love which was so close to perfect for me in every way? Was my view of Love deluded, was I �blinded by love� and simply wished�hungered�to stay bound to her because I didn�t want to start over from the beginning on my search for happiness, purpose, and companionship?

As I asked myself these unanswerable questions, I swerved around a pothole and, braking gingerly, plunged into the mist.