Deathwish 033: Shannon
“The part I would regret. The part that’s almost here”
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There’s this cliff I’ve been trying to get back to ever since I left it. Alone in Big Sur, twenty-one years old. Black leather notebook in hand. A fine-point pen. The Pacific Ocean in front of me forever. It was the first time I ever felt free. I mean, really free. When the van full of hippies pulled up, we walked toward each other, old friends, even though we never met. Sun in our hair. Salt on our skin. I still smoked back then. Traded a handful of Marlborough Lights for the malachite stone they clasped around my neck. I feel that stone right now. I feel the van disappearing down the 101.
This was Before.
Before the day job. Before the wedding. Before the husband and the house. Before the babies who rewired my heart so that it beat for them alone. Ferocious aching love. A love higher than myself. Myself on that cliff in Big Sur waving goodbye to the hippies. Tracing the malachite stone around my neck long after it was lost to a rainy sidewalk in Boston, late for the day job again. Rent, nothing more.
But this is After.
The part I would regret. The part that's almost here.
After the house and the parental vacuum. The two shitty cars and the marriage that kept going though it was gone. After the children are grown and go chasing their own dreams. Nothing to look After but the notebook and the pen, and the cliff, and the ocean. Only different. A single room with a breakfast table and a bit of terrace. Space for words and words and words, mine. And the lover who brings me my coffee every morning before calling me back to bed.
After, almost Now. Missing it, my biggest regret.
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To read the previous installment, "Deathwish 032: Levi," go here. To participate in Deathwish, find details here.
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Shannon was born in Boston, Massachusetts and currently lives in Portland, OR.