Outer World

Are you glad I found you?

We all make choices at points in our life, and at the time, we may not even be aware we're making them. They're shadows of actions, whispers of the shades we leave from our movement and interaction, that, while they occur, we don't really much think about them.

And then you throw on your sleep, and you look at that mirror on your door, and you realize that somewhere down the line of life you stopped being young, and started being hurt. It's not some kid looking back, it's a person of...

Something.

We all make choices, and sometimes we regret them. Sometimes we don't. But most of the time, we're not thinking about making them, we just are. That's the majority of how we live our lives these days, most days, old days: we just are. We're not actively thinking about how we react to any given situation. We do our work, eat our food, it's not like we consciously make these choices. They just are.

And somehow in the phase of these repetitions of half mind we allow those actions we should care about to fall in line. Sometimes, we're shadows, casting more of ourselves about without realizing what the effects are.

And then we make choices, just like we wake up. It's not a conscious thing, change. But that mirror tells you that somehow, it was in some way. That off hand comment, that decision to walk back with someone else, that call you didn't make, that lie you didn't tell, they all are staring back.

And sometimes, you're not sure you want them to.

Where the hell did I go? How did I make those choices?

Who knows.

Nights spent talking, spent walking, spent driving away from those things you didn't choose to do or not do, but didn't know you were or weren't doing at the time. It's like a dark road in a crowded light-less neighborhood. It's all there, the people, shades of life in rest, but you're the only real one alive. And you don't know how they got there, but there they are.

It's like holding smoke at night.

We all make choices at points in our life, and sometimes you look back and wish they'd been different. But how could you have changed something you didn't even know was really happening at the time? You'd have to have been you now, but that's the issue.

You are.

I wish I could lay down on clouds. I think if all that space night nothing could just hold me close for a moment, even a moment, I'd find something that'd make me think I was dreaming.

I've got that pit in my stomach again, and it's not about the blanket or the bed, but the butterflies I haven't had. And that mirror where things I didn't know I did look back and me and lay a little while upon my head.

I think night is an emotion.