The Waiting

I wish someone had told me

I think they could have, surely the knew

They must have figured out that it’s all one big lie...

Like I did.

But everywhere I turned I heard again and again “just wait!”

For what?

I should have asked.

It’s so obvious to me now that I should have asked.

But I didn’t know... no one told me

They could see that I was barely holding it together

Surely they could see

“Just wait!”

I did as I was told.

As if I was offered any other choice

“Things will get easier”

“Things will slow down”

“The ground will stop falling out from under you, you won’t fall, don’t be silly, just wait!”

So I did.

I waited for the after.

For the calm, for the quiet, for the...

The less

Maybe if I’d realized that that was what is was I’d have realized the fallacy of it all

Of the waiting

Because there’s always more.

More days, more weeks, more months, more years all of them filled with enough potential to crush you

Soon a decade had passed and I was still waiting.

For the after

For the less

I begged them for less.

“I can’t breathe, please I just need there to be less”

“Just wait.”

“You can breathe after”

But it’s a little hard to breathe when you’re dead

They’d call me dramatic for saying that

And they did

But that was the only after they would ever have allowed me

Even once I realized, I still kept waiting for the after because no one ever taught me how to let potential fall to the ground even if my life depended on it...

And it did.

It’s funny though

You wait long enough to breathe and sooner or later, things are bound to go dark

And it’s a little hard to catch things in the dark

No matter how much of a reflex it’s become

One way or another, less will find you

Eventually

And if you’re lucky, if you start breathing again...

You can rebuild

You can figure out how to live

Differently this time

So you’re not just waiting for the after