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Parallel
My eyes close as the song begins,
the gentle chord progression erupting into the distortion that punk is known for,
but it's not the guitars that catch my ear,
for the vocals seem to be singing lyrics penned in response to my current thoughts:
"sleeping on a time bomb, staring into space
there's an ocean of unpleasantries we are not prepared to face"
A chuckle escapes my throat as I'm snapped from my reverie of long ago,
the lines being sung evoking memories both bittersweet and fond;
we were so young, so self-engaged, so unaware of what was to come for either of us.
Not to say that era was devoid of any pleasantry,
for that would be a bald-faced lie,
but what joy could possibly survive, let alone thrive,
when my handling of it came from selfish and egotistical foundations?
Another verse comes, nudging along the next part of the story:
"forging little plays of deception and pain
as we watch our foundation crumble away
staggering like birds against a hurricane
and trying all the while to stay out of each other's way"
A subtle reference to our shared theater histories aside,
what a hurricane it was that we were to end up facing in the ensuing years--
our lives may have become divergent,
yet who knew they would continue to run parallel?
Deranged actors cast in the starring roles of a doomed production,
cartwheeling haphazardly through the passage of time,
condemned to subservience underneath a stinging chemical lash.
We maintained casual communication throughout,
never hinting about our respective woes,
just grateful for some external escape from the maelstrom of daily living.
This morbid self-reflection is not where I had intended to go with this stream of consciousness--
as though hearing me, another lyric smashes through the veil to snap me back to the present:
"is there no redemption? no common good?
is there nothing we can do for ourselves? or only what we should?"
But of course!
As with all in active recovery, our stories do not end upon the multitude of bottoms on which we found ourselves;
whether we found redemption--or if it found us--is irrelevant,
for it was through performing acts we should have been engaging in long ago,
ones with the aim of self-improvement that we may someday contribute to the greater good,
which led us to this ethereal realm of self-discovery, bountiful grace, and loving acceptance.
The poignancy of the lyrics positively drips with irony, and I laugh once more--
yet again, the universal language speaks for me when words are proving elusive on my own accord.
Music may speak, but words can be empty, hollow sounds without actions to back them up.
That thought leads me to recall our first reunion in years,
a slight smile warming my face as my memory paints the vivid picture:
an embrace, a glimpse of illumination behind your winsome sapphire eyes;
seeing such life exuding from you only served to highlight my own serenity.
You claimed through the years that I possessed a specialness of sorts,
a claim I make in equal measure when referencing your own spirit,
and here we are, come full circle,
our time spent together since reading as a rollicking adventure:
autonomous teenagers in the bodies of grown adults,
we embrace under the cover of night, pupils of organic chemistry previously studied,
a certain satisfaction found at the apparently lengthy half-life of our shared compounds;
laughing like idiots as we relive our misadventures and create newer memories,
sharing our respective past ordeals while somberly appreciating just how far we've come.
We went down the scale to tremendous depths,
only to resurface and scramble back to shore,
delirious and gasping for air, yet alive;
the circumstances may be different, but the tale remains the same--
life, as we are so fond of saying, is weird.
The past is gone, the future unknowable,
but I'd be hard-pressed to find a more fulfilling way to experience the here and now,
learning and growing along this path of recovery life has lain before us.
You've got my support, as I know I've got yours,
so if I may, in closing, bastardize another popularly overused phrase from the cultural lexicon:
carpe-fucking-diem, my friend.
