I was thinking back – not fondly but with a sense of having escaped – at that crushing feeling that used to be my regular companion in my personal life.
That one where I’d be feeling pleased that I’d ‘managed’ some new parent hurdle I related at the success or actions of a friend or family, only to be crushed into the dark, cold earth when I got told how selfish and thoughtless and stupid I was for – well – for not filling my thoughts with Him and His Needs all the time.
It was most definitely a falling sensation: like the one in our early dream sleep where you fall off a cliff and wake with a start. Except this was the falling sensation accompanied by darkness and disappointment. A mire-ing into the mud rather than a bottomlessness.
In fact an image came to mind of the aluminum pop cans the (in)cool dudes in junior high used to flatter under one foot. They would put the weight of one leg on the top of the can and a friend would flick the can’s middle just right … and PHWUMP! The can would be top and bottom with everything crushed I between. It was a satisfying sideshow: the sound, the small disc the can turned into.
That is what that emotional crush felt like – almost exactly.
It even had that sound effect as it pushed my heart outward and emptied me of ego.
PHWUMP.
There’s my wife. In her proper place: crushed into a flat disc and tossed into the recycling bin. They don’t make ’em like they used to.
1000 days 