Harvest

Harvest: a conversation with a friend



            “Cold, that’s how I felt. Freezing cold, even though my lips had barely lost the touch of the warm aluminum and my still thumb burned from holding the lighter for so long. I remember looking through the smoke that hung thick and rank in my room at my friends who sat on my bed. Then there was like, this thud, a slow soft pulse in my head. A wave of just total peace. My world was frozen, then on fire.”

            I’m racing inside my head. Can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t feel. Tell someone, tell them. “I think I’m trippen out”. Laughter, they’re laughing at me. Great. Just get away then, get away. Go, go, go, down this hall, go. I stumble into the dining room running my hand against the smooth cool wall. My head burns. Suddenly I see a stranger in my path. I begin to get scared but I realize it’s only me. I look into my eyes. Then I’m in corner of the ceiling looking down. I watch my friends pick my body of the floor.

            “Thinking back now, I guess it was a long time coming. My life was changing so much and I was scared to let go and grow up. You know? Like my family was just falling apart. Things were just moving too quickly. I just couldn’t keep up, no matter how fast I ran. But that didn’t stop me from trying.”

            I was down there with them again, sitting on the ground looking up. Looking at my friends  faces, they are scared too. They look so familiar but I can’t recall their names. I’m shaking now, my muscles twitch and my brain hums. Words fume from my mouth before I can’t think. I’m begging for an ambulance. They shake their heads.  “No, we can’t, just calm down”. I lunge for the phone but they hold me back. Defeated I sprint down the hallway and return to my room. RUN my brain screams. Go straight to the edge of the earth and run right off the planet.

            “I think that’s pretty normal though. People run all the time. Not physically just like, mentally. They just do it in different ways so you can’t really tell. Like they cheat on their wives or get wasted or work all the time or whatever. Stuff like that. People are just scared to think. They get to a certain point mentally and they can’t go any further. ‘Cause they spend so much time seeing what they want to see and when they can’t it just really fucks them up.”

I leapt up on my bed and grabbed hold of the headrest. I was scratching at it, but the wall behind it wasn’t coming down. I’m trapped in my room. I’m going to die. I can’t leave my life like this. I slouch over and fell back on my bed. I feel calm, it’s over. I’m my “normal” self again. My friends are around me. Did that really just happen? I ask. They stare.

“For me it was like, the seeds of my past and were almost being fed by what was going on then. Something just must have took hold. And I’m glad it happened. It was a total slap in the face but also it forced me to think about this kind of stuff. I don’t mean to get corny or anything but I guess it really is true what they say. About reaping what you sew. Not that I thought I was doing anything wrong. I wasn’t. I did the best I could and I have no regrets about any of it. I just wasn’t ready for the harvest. You know? But I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready.”