Black Summer Rain

 Even as it poured down all over me, it was my shame that could not be washed away. There were so many fragments I did not understand, yet I was making big decisions on the perceptions of light, cutting through the cracks of my devastation. 

My audience was mixed, some watching the collision unfold, some watching the back side of the screen that contained a younger me from seemingly a lifetime ago, and those who somehow were seeing a tornado of both trying to harmonize in demented union. You could say that all was lost, yet anything was possible.

The humidity surrounded me, and the fan growled because it knew it would die without ever winning. Maybe I knew how I got here, but I did not understand it. I knew it was while I was riding a wave in which my life was an adventure that could not possibly be happening to me, even though it was.

Photo by Bailey Alexander on Unsplash

Looking back I do not know why the few people around me were not screaming at me that the bridge was out on the road ahead. I say this, but I know that they were, but it was all so unintelligible I could never comprehend it. It must have been an incredible topic of conversation when I was not in the room.

The big bang happened in the north woods. My energy to make decisions every moment on high-speed chases seemed limitless. When I was a child, when on a car trip, we would drive passed a steep mountain and I would wish that I could get out of the car and climb to the top of it. Had I been let out of the car, there is no doubt that I would do it. That was how things were, the hills that I climbed daily I could never have the energy left in the rest of my life to climb today, that is just how it was.

One moment I was looking in the mirror, knowing when I stepped outside, I was living in an alternate reality. I pushed every limit I could see and owned every one of them even if they were not mine to own. It was there, next to the supernova that I made jump into a fiery pool that I could not even comprehend. Then it happened, entire lifelines passed by me like picket fences.

The hot asphalt of the central Pennsylvania highway burned into my shoulder. My hands scorched from the hot metal of a serene July morning in the mountains. What a contrast from yesterday's sensuous dream atop Bear Mountain. It feels like two years ago on a similar trip. In a strange way, all of my accomplishments during that time were largely geographical. Today, I was running straight off the cliff. The confidence of what I could actually do was more like a Coyote and Roadrunner scene from Looney Toons where the Coyote would keep running off the cliff and would go a distance before looking down to realize there was no earth beneath his feet. I was in that thin-air sprint. I was so magnificent at it too. You should have seen me.

The big sky of Tennesee bore down on us like we were mere ants at a convention of giants. I was the guardian and I was still invincible. The machine I piloted, I did with tools made of almost no substance. Running hard into battle with a cardboard sword, what could possibly go wrong?

Tennessee was years of a little voice in the back of my head asking if I was out of my mind. She was sitting next to me, my prize, my spoil, my victory. I still believed it. Believing that was an unending source of fuel for determination, which did not have any effect on the fuel needed for the actual journey even though I knew, that it was running low.

Now on the ten-year journey across Tennessee, we were coming apart at the seams. My serene July morning under the car in the mountains was failing, and here I had been so proud to just take care of it.  This is where my defiance comes to the rescue. Just after my exile into Arkansas, I made the decision to run without conventional means, accepting a new reality and staying alive instead of putting myself in grave danger. Had I not, this would have been a story other people had told that I would never have heard or been here to hear.

The Texas state line loomed as the sun was setting over the Lone Star State ahead of me. I had no idea about the disasters awaiting. As it got dark and exhausted, we slept in the grass under the giant Texarkana sky. I started to understand that I knew as much about the next hour of my life as I did about the next turn of a page in a book that someone else was writing. It was not really sleep, as I watched the live-action of this border all night, fascinated with its activities. I was thankful that we were in a moment of stasis. Vulnerable, but still.

The sun rose on what was about to be the longest day of my life to this point. I made some repairs. Such as it is when you are headed to the Coastal Bend, not far down the road, the route takes us off the highway. Last night I noticed a deep and old antagonist following me out of the corner of my eye. I was trying to pretend it was not there, but my predator kept pace with me.

The day's journey began normally. I think it was merely me trying to duplicate other journeys somehow and overlay it into the reality of today. But, the reality of today has begun to take over. It started out as something I thought I could control, but moment by moment, it rose up into view and started telling me that it was in control.

My footing and grip began to falter, at the crossroads, my grip failed and I slipped. I bruised my knees and cut my hands in the hot Texas sun. On the side of the road, I was regrouping, trying to use my cleverness to over come a new assailant that was firing at me from the south west hill. I met a man, who jumped into action, and although it just seemed that this was the way that he was, helping me to overcome my new attacker, it became dangerously evident, that he too was out to get me and used far more cunning ways to overtake us.

With gratitude and pleasantries, I fought hard to break us free. He had helped, but it almost cost us dearly. Dangers lurked everywhere and I was the lone centurion navigating through the deep gloom.

As the sun began to set, I used all of the rest of the resources I had. There was no more. This had to do it. The promised land was to our south and somehow we had to make it. As the sun disappeared on our western horizon, our morning pursuer found us, and it was then I knew, it was going to be a night like no other.

I gripped the wheel, grit my teeth and said, "I win tonight, somehow". Deeper into the south we travelled, and then turned south again. As the hot gulf coast night air blew in on us I knew, that I was not going to win after all. A thousand options and none of which were even possible. No resources, no one to help. Floating in the dark of space, aimless, vulnerable and in imminent danger.

Dead in a dark ocean, the object of my desire became my new antagonist, she called me out even though she had seen me fight one battle after the next over the last 10 days. I sat in the pitch black, "I tell you, we are not finished yet." She challenged me, and I walked away.

I heard a sound and then it was gone. A few minutes later there it was again moving north now. a hand reached out, I thought quickly and using reason, the laws of physics, and desperation, formulated a plan that was so unorthodox, but worked. When the rocket engine kicked in, I burned all of the fuel in an effort to push our momentum to our new home and just barely made it. 4 AM, we landed. Every moment from now on, I had to deal with what I just did for the last 100 days. I had no idea how hard that was about to be.

Coming home was so beautiful and I had no idea whatsoever why I ever left this paradise. I belonged here. Slowly the reality of what I had done started to seep in like water into a ship that was breached everywhere. I learned that I did not know the person I was with or the magnitude of the problems I had taken possession of. I brought that hell upon others too, since I just could not stand on my own.

I fell back into part of my life from three years ago, and every night at home, I had to deal with the worst decision of my life. That was nothing compared to my own demons though. They were still with me and more enraged than ever. I was walking and talking, but I was dancing at the zombie zoo.

Everything came to its end on that one September Friday night. I took a gamble and fell to the bottom of the cistern of understanding that anything I had achieved in the last three years was gone. I learned nothing, I was nothing. I failed. I even heard the words that burned into my skin that I not only failed, but I was a failure. 

Then it happened, a collision that was more like an attack, from an ally that I could not have believed could do it. It filled me with a rage like I have never known. I was done and I was gone, my pride not yet having died as it was about to. Laying in the dirt, far below the surface of the earth, I knew there was no way out. The only thing that I could do now was to work hard to safely get everyone clear of the devastation that was me. Acceptance had finally arrived. I could not live with anyone. I needed to make sure that the mess that I was, that I should live alone so it would not cause any more trouble. Finally, pride faded into nothing.

I sent everyone away to safety, and I looked around. I had nothing, I was going nowhere, I was nothing. In a strange way, it was the best place I had been in for a very long time. This is where humility sprouted. I stood in the black summer rain, only knowing that it was all gone. Everything. For some reason that was good. There was an honesty to it that I could not deny.

When the storm was over, I raised my eyes to the north, and I needed to know what my life looked like without coercion. Ironic, because I would charge back in the biggest deception of my existence, although I would not know of it for the next 40 years. I cannot regret this, because of it I gave a gift to people who would have had nothing. My only regret is that I was not stronger for them. 

The devastation of those days molded me into who I am. For better or worse, the hopelessness and demoralization of standing in the black summer rain is what gave me understanding too valuable to ever count. As long as I live, I will never fully understand it.