truth

As I drove home tonight, my car spun out, smashing me against the center divide.
At eighty miles-an-hour death is quick and merciful. The raccoon I swerved to
avoid wasn’t so lucky; the truck that was following so closely on my tail
crushed the lower half of its spine. Paralyzed it waited, the life slowly
ebbing from its veins. As I drove on, I saw myself plastered against the
windshield, murdered in my sleep, slitting my wrists, finally, after all those
last second saves, succumbing to the urge to fly just for a moment, before the
ground kissed me that hard kiss – the five story kiss beginning on the roof and
ending as a stain on the cold concrete of the sidewalk. I kept walking, leaving
my battered remains for the street sweeper to wash away with the rest of the
night’s garbage. I walked alone, hidden in a shroud of secrecy, until I could
stand walking no more. I burst out running, egging myself on…always pushing
myself faster. My heart pounded; I ran on. My track coach used to tell me it
was only once I went as far as I thought I could, and then kept going, that I
was truly doing my best. I never got past that moment of despair…until
tonight. But, still running, long after I had given up, I wondered what would
happen if I kept going forever – going as far as I thought possible, pushing
past, and running on, the same cycle over and over – and then, as I ran out onto
the Golden Gate, leaving the sleeping city behind me, I knew. And as I jumped;
as the numbing water reached up to envelop me in its dark embrace, I saw clearly
for the first time.