A series of short fiction pieces continuing the stories told in concept albums.
This week’s article is inspired by Brand New’s “Degausser.”
Life is scary. Of course, I mean this in the most cliché way possible. It’s unpredictable, it knows no extremes. No—those concepts are man-made. Life has no obligation to adhere to things that are comprehensible. Like, how you can have everything you think you want—only for it to be swept out from under your feet by the smallest connection of events. How it can feel like the end of everything you have known.
Yeah, life does that.
At a certain point, you begin to believe in some sort of divine meddling force, interrupting your every good thing, prolonging the bad. Then, you begin to believe it is you. You are the creator, the destroyer, and you become stuck because it doesn’t make sense. Life doesn’t make sense.
After being chewed up and spit out too many times, trying becomes fraught and there’s no point anymore. No point in fighting and losing, dealing with punches whose force you can never anticipate even when you see them coming from miles away.
Then, it turns around and rebuilds everything around you, better than you could have ever imagined because life has no imagination. Life only is.
My life was ready to end, or rather, I was ready to be finished with it. But, like the cliché that I am, I found someone who made the small things and some of the big things life threw at me worth it. I still had my bad days, I was still grey on the inside, cold as ever on the outside. I was still me, but found the track to a better me.
I was me, and I was a little bit of them, too. I made peace with their faults and the ways in which they made themself who they were. I had started to make peace with myself.
Life, though, life knows no grace. So, life did not think twice before it took them away from me. Carpet gone again, I wanted to throw the towel in. I knew I couldn’t.
I had made too much progress, and I owed it to myself to keep going. Even as my heart disagreed, I knew I could live and love again.
I guess, what I’m trying to say is: I forgive life. Even though it is above morals, hope, and reason, I forgive life, because I could have ended up without ever experiencing heart-wrenching love like I did, and I think everyone deserves a little bit of that.
So, I forgive you, life. And I thank you.
“Goodbye to sleep.
Goodbye to love.”
