Dear Pen Pal,
You aren’t afraid of being struck by lightning until you are standing in a storm. Gravity isn’t a phobia until you are loosing your balance on a ledge. You don’t dream of drowning until you are treading water with tired legs, and the idea of asphalt is un-alarming until your skin is scraping across it. Road rash is a reminder of our own vincibility. A concrete scar - a continuous challenge to our most arrogant immortal philosophies. Knuckles on our hips we adamantly declare that we do not fear death, but yet we fear all that can kill us. A theoretical death is dramatically more digestible than a practical death. Hypothetically, we are heroic. In actuality, we are wired to survive. Societally, we confuse cowardice with a primitive preservation of life. Paradoxically, fear can keep us alive and can keep us from living. Anecdotally, I accidentally veered into oncoming traffic and threw my scooter down onto a sidewalk to avoid high-fiving headlights. I climbed out from under the bike and scanned the street for my skin; I was un-shredded. Epidermically, an anomaly.
But the road had rashed my mind. I shamefully walked the scooter home by the handlebars and left the key in a place I hoped I wouldn’t find it. I paced the hotel room watching violent replays in my mind of vehicular death that did not manifest. I sat silently at the end of the bed, staring at my face’s reflection in the visor of the scratched helmet. One bad burn will have you seeing smoke. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me fatally, well that is just a shame. How does one measure their distance to death? With a ruler? A protractor? A calendar? Would you want to know how close you are? Are you curious? Do you hunt hints to solve death’s riddle? I have died a million times in “if”s.” If one thing had gone wrong, or if one thing had stopped going right, putatively I would have perished. Anything can kill you, but only one thing will.
It is a privilege to dream of life and not death on a daily basis. My heart hurts for the humans of the world that live in a perpetual state of threat, justified heightened paranoia. I don’t know how one falls asleep with doubts that they will wake again. For the eyes that have witnessed the morbidity of mortality, jaded to atrocities, the road rash is a cataract. I struggle to fathom an existence hyper-focused on solely existing. I want to offer security to the insecure, but who can I protect if I am perishable myself? The vulnerability is visceral. The strangers dying in strange ways are not foreigners to their family and friends. You are someone’s stranger. Empathetically, it should always feel close to home. But yet, you could spend up until your last breaths counting the catastrophes and picking at scabs.
I am not afraid of planes but when the cabin shakes I hold my breath. Is it more heroic to silently accept the inevitability of death with a wry smile, or to fight for your literal life against the quiet goodnight? I suppose it depends if death is my decision. I do not want my life to ever be in my hands, but if it were placed in my palm, I would squeeze a fist and punch viciously. You cannot deny death, only defer it. I don’t want life to end nor death to begin, but when the final grain of sand drops through the hourglass I will stand with a gracious sigh, uncurl my fingers and shake death’s hand and say thank you, because every day that I did not die was a pleasant surprise.
Love,
Ryan Anthony Dube
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