sideways

All that time we were spinning on the icy bridge and into the white van head-on, my seatbelt was stuck. The more I pulled the more I wondered if it was better to hang on to it or drop to the bottom. The spinning around and around was the dark calm before the impending crash, on ice, on a bridge, on top of the Mississippi River. When we didn’t crash, by a hair, my almost death was not my only problem in life. It was the failed friendships and duties and loyalties lying in a sea of quicksand, sinking with no return. It was me trying to pull the seatbelt out to save my one last friendship. That was a death that I in my twenties accepted because I thought I was not understood and had a terrible sadness. The thing is… it’s true when they say the rope burns at both ends, it entropies and cannot be repaired. It’s true when I tell my son to be grateful for the good people in his life because they only come once. Selfish wants and impulsive desires that see no one but you. It was I, that was the asshole time and time again. I take this accountability with nothing to show for it. Empty hands left with the hidden guilt when the past should have been the past. How I wish someone would have told me my wants were not better than my integrity, but I wouldn’t have listened anyway.