Sometimes I hesitated before walking through the sliding doors. I let all hope go, the efforts at joy drop to the ground and shatter. I allowed the weight to sink down my shoulders. I watched the people move in and out of the building, their feet stepping one in front of the other, taking them where they needed to go, and I marveled at how happy my sadness made me feel.
Coping mechanisms are scaffolding: A temporary framework for support. A cog in the wheel of repair. Sometimes you just want to sweep it aside, to see the structure underneath. I loosened my grip on all pretense as I watched these people, these patients.
Patients.
Patience.
Now I’m standing in my living room in North Platte, Nebraska, home of the world’s largest railroad classification yard and Buffalo Bill Cody. Glenn Miller spent part of his childhood in North Platte, and the mobster Henry Hill once slung hash here. Am I meant to be part of this oddball legacy?
“So you think I’m screwed,” I say to the girl who is and is not me.
“Did I say that?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I think you did.”
Maybe she said it, maybe I just wanted to hear it. It’s freeing to give up on hope, that palm-slapping drunkard. Better to tie yourself to the dark, the black, the impenetrable, the inevitable. More truthful to prop your fists against that wall, to press your cheek to its plaster and to feel that ice.
Best to drop a fight you can’t win.
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