I made this (above) with AI, which inspired this:
We would have, had he lived long enough, retired to an airstream and travelled. That was the story anyway. I went along with it because it was as plausible as anything else. More plausible than what actually happened. But retirement was a long way off. We talked about it like you do winning the lottery: with no real thoughts of the reality of it.
But without him, what would that life be? A prison sentence of disconnectedness, loneliness, which the years following his death were, except peppered with the temporary euphoria of interacting with strangers, followed by a desolation of emptiness that strangers cause. As I imagine it, anyway.
In reality it would probably be more like the anxiety of being out in the middle of no where at night, wondering how safe you actually were. Maybe the wind maybe whistling through one of the cracks, something broken I can’t fix. Someone wanting to help. The sidelong glance of a particular type struggling with life who, deciding perhaps, that you’ll do, they’ll try you on for their particular brand of dysfunction without a thought that perhaps they won’t do for you.
My mind goes places then, away from what might have been (since if it never actually was then it never might have been) to more sour places: the traps you find yourself in, because of your own particular dysfunction. Like being afraid to upset people because you are so afraid of what might happen, and there you are, trapped in a state of niceness, of helpfulness, goodness, and you don’t want to be fake, so you stand behind that goodness where there’s no threat. Oh, no, you believe in it. You call it Dignity and Respect and build whole philosophies around it justifying your dysfunction and making it better, making it righteous. Trapped in relationships that you try to pound into a shape of something it can not be.Until you must finally get into that airstream trailer and escape, hoping you’re not tracked down, followed, watched, until you’re off all the socials, you keep to yourself, until maybe you use a different variation of you when you check in to the next site that you can stay awhile. But just a short while.
Because that airstream…why, I’d know it anywhere.