A day is such a fleeting thing for most, but for me it can be a lifetime and I hop from one day to another, unaware of the accumulation of time, until often it is too late or I am unaware of how I wandered into a forest that never seems to end. Usually this realization is a pang of horror and dread, discovering that I am saddled by something that I said yes to on a whim and enjoyed a few times and fell into a routine of interaction that I did not ultimately desire.
So it was, however many weeks ago now.
Imagine all the lengthy days inside those weeks, hopping, busy with the life I lead, which somehow accelerated in the last month and it all sped past me, every day just another day of time that passed with some small measure of success.
I was completely unaware. Walking in the darkness of my malcontent, searching the sky for something, but always finding it empty for me. For others, it was full and rich, a bright place to explore. For me, it was a dark blackness obscured with a few faint, but prominent constellations. My family, my friends, my jobs, every day they turned in succession across my sky, a mapped out daily occurrence with no surprises (though the occasional shooting star might streak across me, or the disappointment of a satellite, or the drone of an airplane, big and heavy and unwelcome).
Even when something was new, it quickly fell into the dimness against that sky.
And so it was, for a long time.
Imagine that, feel that, then imagine walking up, looking into that sky, dark, bleak, full of emptiness and then there is the moon. The moon who gives light, which gives life, the moon who illuminates the things you could not see, the moon who smiles down at you with a bemused grin of unending pleasure and appreciation.
Every day I explored the moon somehow. Every day I looked forward to it, wondered how it might appear, if it would burst through the afternoon sky, a shimmering mirage against the blueness of daylight or if it would crawl above the horizon, as if it was hugging the earth. Every day the moon had a different shape and another feature to reveal about itself. And every day I was there to watch for it, to find it in that bleak sky, despite all the other things on my horizons, the other constellations that roamed my world.
Eventually, as the days began to accumulate into these weeks past and the moon proved it was strong and clean and big enough for all of me to rest inside it, I began to yearn for the moon, and miss the time when I wasn't standing in his strong light or able to see that face staring down at me. Sometimes, you can see the moon when the dark side takes its turn in orbit, but often you cannot. So there was a self-imposed period of stubbornness that I endeavored through to prove something to myself, that I could spend some days in the darkness again, not looking for the moon, not shouting up at it, not hoping for anything to come of it, just being with myself and that bleak dark sky with its faint but strong constellations: family, friends, work.
I learned that I can live without the moon. I have lived before his arrival and I can certainly live without his light and deposits of brilliance. In the end, if all the days of wonder do not overwhelm the reality and obscure the few bad days we've shared (a series of miscommunciation and carefulness bordering on insanity), I will have those days to remember him by and that will be enough. And yet, even though I don't need this, him, us; I want it. I want to give myself away to someone who can hold me, even if it seems futile and the distance between us is too much. And not just any someone, but the moon.
Except, maybe there is a certain point, when the futility of loving the moon becomes unbearable and foolish. For now, I will be the eight-year-old who stared up at the moon and wondered if there really was a man in there.
