Highwire

What happens when you live life in a state somewhere between denial and acknowledgement, halfway between peace of heart and frustration with every aspect of the world around you? It is a precarious perch, and one wrong move can plunge you headlong over the precipice. Something as stupid and insignificant—compared to real tragedies in the world—as losing electricity and finding that the generator is broken can plunge you into the depths of despair, can leave you hanging by your fingertips, trying desperately to not drop into an abyss of anxiety. And it’s maddening. It’s maddening because the illusion was so good. The peaceful demeanor looked, smelled, tasted, sounded, and felt like the real deal, like an edifice made of granite. Now, every ounce of energy is directed at maintaining the façade, at not letting it crack or crumble, because one teeny, tiny line of crazing can quickly lead to a crevasse of crazy. The realm over which each of us has control is minute. It takes a high-powered microscope to find even a trace of it, yet day to day, we think that all the eye can see belongs to us to do with as we will. That wire running from the pole in the road to my house is so much more powerful than anyone imagines. It’s such a thin line, and if I were to tiptoe across it, chances are good that I’d fall off before I got even one full step out.