Occasionally, time stops for me. Or more, it stutters, replaying in a one second loop.
I can’t do anything different. All I can do is be aware of the stuttering. I can experience that second, over and over and over. But I can’t change it. It’s fixed.
I was terrified the first time it happened. I was ten and my father was asking me about a dent in the side panel of the house. A dent I’d made kicking a soccer ball into the side of the house. When he asked me if I knew what had happened, I shook my head, “No.”
But my head kept shaking. Like an electric seizure. “No.” “No.” “No.”
Shake shake shake.
My father was caught in the same loop, but his head wasn’t shaking. It was settling. Falling. Maybe dimming is a way to put it?
I was caught in the loop a long time, so I got a good long look at that expression. Grim to disappointed. Mad to let down.
Down down down. His face kept falling.
The loop broke and he nodded. “Alright. Let me know if you remember anything.”
He had let me off the hook, but it didn’t feel that way. Because I knew that he knew. How could I not? I had seen his reaction over and over.
But I didn’t come clean. The moment haunted me, but I never tried to make it right. Instead, I obsessed over my father’s face. All the little muscles that were activated by my obvious lie.
The loops happened irregularly across my life. Always the same. Always a brief moment, replayed immediately and seemingly infinitely.
The bus station in the town where I went to college. My long distance girlfriend had come to visit and I’d said, “I can’t do this anymore” and we cried and kissed and I took her back to the bus station, and I’d almost changed my mind.
Or maybe, I was almost honest with myself.
She turned to step on her bus and my hand went out to her. Over and over, it went out. Maybe traveling no more than four inches in space.
Out, and stopping.
Out, and stopping.
Over and over, I stopped myself from stopping her. I saw my hand. I saw her hair. Her jacket. Her backpack. I smelled diesel. I smelled her shampoo.
Over and over, I almost grab her shoulder. My hand never makes it there.
Over and over, I’m almost honest with myself.
Ten years later, or maybe more, my boss offers me a promotion on the day I brought my letter of resignation. I look from their smiling face to the letter in my hand.
Face to hand.
Face to hand.
The letter stays in my seat. Later, I hide it in my desk.
Face to hand.
I’d typed the letter in almost a fugue state. Delirious. Full of joy and excitement. Not thinking. Not allowing myself to think.
I’d dreamed of escaping that place for so long. Dreamed of being fired. Dreamed of quitting. Dreaming of disappearing and never coming back.
Professional resignation was a compromise. But it was what I wanted. A version of what I’d dreamed about.
Face to hand. The face isn’t what I remember about that loop, and neither is the hand, or the letter. Just the feeling. A quiet, “Oh no” in my soul.
I was defeated. The little part of me that believed that I was entitled to want and to need had been bold and had taken charge. And I had been so thrilled to let it take charge.
But it was little. It relied entirely on momentum. It wasn’t built to survive any sort of pushback.
So that smile was death. Defeat. For a 10% raise and the addition of “Senior” to my already incomprehensible title.
My life stutters. Little moments get caught in something unseeable and just hang there for a time. I’ve gotten used to it. Lately I’ve begun to wonder if those moments are more meaningful than I once thought. What if those stuttering seconds are fate recalibrating itself? Life turning the page to the correct chapter in my personal choose your own adventure?
So now when time stutters I can’t help but wonder what I’ve just lost. What are the pages I won’t be able to read? What endings have been cut off from me?
The sad truth is that none of this has made me more brave. I mourn the paths I’ve lost while still committing myself to the path of loss prevention. No amount of regret ever changes who I am and the choices I make.
Even now, time stutters as I hold my finger over the “clear file” button. None of this needs to be said. None of this needs to be shared.
But again and again my finger hovers and then recedes. Hovers, and recedes. I consider saying nothing. But I will say something.
I don’t delete this file. I let it live. And again my path changes.
Photo credit: Hardae
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