Parachute

Broken always are my lines of thought, or so it seems, but it is not.

Instead, I hold them as one holds the lines of a kite; from mind to hand to strand, at once a manifestation of a confidence in reality, and belief in the unseen. If I hold on, with my back to the wind, this will work. From mind to hand. Signals, currents, fibers, and strength. Hold on, guide your will into connection, into one line, then break it apart to grasp the shape of your intent, your thought, your hope, and launch it, with its incomprehensible weave, its uncountable silken ravel, into the wind.

And hold on.

The wind will do as the wind wills.

Hold on.

Well, that didn’t go as planned.

I say that a lot more than I’d like, though, having said that, I say it a lot more because I actually have plans once in a while. Having said THAT, my plans don’t really seem like much, and I don’t talk about them because they tend to overwhelm me with their complexity when I say them out loud, and I find myself looking into the eyes, and calculating the sum of the body language of my target, and searching for all manner of things that I’ll want to attach strands of meaning and fibers of value and cables of security to, and approval is a shitty parachute, and the wind, well, the wind will do as it wills because it’s not me, and it’s not mine.

Plans are hard, though. My ongoing problem with plans is that the plans that I make aren’t plans for me, so I don’t want to do them. It’s a tangle that I’ve spent most of my life trying to find a way to tie into a neat little bow, or a functional knot so that someone else will like it, or will be able to use it.....I’M a tangle that I’ve spent most of my life trying to tie into a neat little bow or a functional knot so that someone else will like me, or will be able to use me, and I hate that.

The bible states that, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”, And “If you would be great in god’s kingdom, learn to be the servant of all.”, and I always thought those were noble endeavours. The problem is that I feel like I’d lay down my life for anybody, and I’ve never understood why. I’m still not sure I understand why, but maybe I’ll find out if I value living my own life with a certain measure of austerity and purpose when it comes to acknowledging my own value instead of inflating that of others in an unfavourable exchange that leaves me with so little of myself after the performative acts of service have taken their toll, sapped me of will, made me less, and left me in a state of frustration with a lack of self control and of a mind that can only react instead of respond, so I then daydream of grand impossibilities and heroic gestures, and lament the unfulfilling nature of my life that I have given away, piece by piece, for approval, the parachute that ever burns. Away.

Fuck that.

Nobody wants that. Nobody wants a weak man, a man who puts himself last, a man who is ok with being the lowest priority, especially that man, because life sucks when you can’t appreciate your own value, and you’re so angry because you feel worthless and rejected whenever anyone turns away, when the wind does as the wind wills, and it’s all burned away, and you’re left holding on to limp and tangled lines, holding on, to a bad idea.

But ideas are fire, and there’s nothing stopping you from lighting up that tangled mess, with it’s stupid bows and useful knots, and starting all over again, not like how you planned, but how you ARE.

I used to burn a lot of stuff when I was a kid. And after. And one of my favourite things to burn was rope. Once it gets going, polypropylene rope starts to drip little flaming drops of melted plastic, which is awesome, but they also make a really cool noise. It sounds like lasers being fired in space but influenced by the farting sound of a released balloon. The problem with this genre of horseplay is that, inevitably, you’ll get one of those flaming drops of melted plastic ON YOU somewhere, and there’s nothing you can do about it that won’t make it worse. If you touch it, you’ll then have two burns, two bigger burns. If you flinch with the rope, you’ll probably just get more drops on you, or someone else, or you’ll light something else on fire. I suppose you could plan for the inevitability and have water on hand or something, but that’s not really the nature of the exercise, is it.

It’s fun for a while, but you just have to learn to stop doing dumb shit like that unless you have a very clear message that you’re trying to send without making it worse, and you are prepared to heal from the inevitable burns this one last time.

Because it hurts to cut ties. It hurts when people are disappointed in you. It hurts to be lonely. It hurts to say no and mean it. It might go against everything that you’ve been taught to stand up for yourself and let others manage their own shit without you, but all that shit was wrong, or maybe you just misunderstood the message. You can’t fulfill other’s needs from an empty cup, you can’t grow stronger by holding someone up, only by lifting them.

From mind to hand, and from hand to strand, signals and strength, ideas branching to hold the shape of your idea. Your back is to the wind, and the wind does as the wind wills, but way up there in the gale, holding your attention is you.

Or it fucking should be.

Hold on.