Halfway Home

Things have been breaking for a while now. It's not often that losing the leg off a table you don't even own makes you reflect on your life situation.
A haze sits solemnly over the city, turns the air into gold. I go outside, halfway down the chipped steps. The sun is framed halfway between our neighbour's deck and roof. I find myself stuck momentarily, that all-too-familiar red orb dull enough so that I don't look away.
I have things to do, of course. I have to tie up the loose ends and tape up collections of half-read books, fill half-full boxes. At least I still have my optimism, that much is whole. The rest: I have stopped caring. To be completely honest.
It's at this point in the process where every stain begins to surface. Previously smothered by desks, couches, letters addressed to no one you know. Piles of - of what? Nothing, really. I don't spend any time shuffling through it - there's no point. The walls are empty now, apart from half a quote: "...ere the weather is decisive". Apt. Everything was going well until the weather went bipolar on us. And then all that you know as stable becomes a shadow of itself, or so it seems. It's not like things were perfect, I mean, confusion and frustration had been no stranger for a good while before the atmosphere built up enough to bring down a deluge like that. I had been concentrating on a circle so tiny and distorted and seemingly close that, by the time I looked up, we were hurtling into the earth, utterly unprepared.

I'm sure we all like to think of ourselves as balanced people. We have the ability, the opportunity to focus on things like our personalities, the importance (or lack thereof) we place on material possessions, whether or not we get insurance and how long our showers are. When placed into situations that rattle your sense of stability and control, these things get lost. Not in the pejorative sense - it's simply that you find yourself with more important things to think about. And in this process, while dissolved in limbo, you might lose your shit. Your legs might go weak, you might freeze. You might assert control and find yourself stronger. Or weaker. Or with no change, at least initially.

There's a poignant beauty in destruction. Small things nestled peripherally for so long are discarded, stale emotion often discarded with them. Prioritize, organize. File it away. You crystallize your world, your only reference point being yourself.

I find myself reminded that the progression, the process of organic growth & decay, is a constant. It fuels itself and burns simultaneously. I am not separate from it. I am in the middle of it right now, and even if I stare at that sun for a bit too long it won't blind me. I'll remember the colour well, the feeling of watching things split & scatter. Old chairs, clothes, dust and songs and time and thoughts, not just your own, definitely not just your own. And for some reason, even if it's guilt or love or basic human growth, I feel responsible for this house, the people, the life I have known well; in all its half-broken glory.
In the half-light. The halfway home.