I dropped my scooter yesterday. It was dumb. I was going up the ramp at my school that I go up everyday and somehow my back tire got caught on the ledge below the ramp. When I tried to rev the motor up, to get it up the step, the whole thing just fell sideways on me.
The scooter, still running, fell on my leg, scraping my knee. I bonked my (helmeted) head on a car behind me. I skinned my hand. My boss and a few TAs saw me and came running out to help. I had hurt my pride.
I laughed it off and righted my scooter. They helped my park it and grabbed my bag. It was embarrassing. Right now I feel like that is a metaphor for so many things/events/people in my life. It used to be a routine–I pulled the scooter up on the ramp everyday without incident, but then, in one day, everything just changed.
The scooter dropped, the knee is skinned raw, you try to laugh off the pain and embarrassment of change, but it’s always there. Lurking. Waiting for you to get established. To get comfortable. To feel like infinity and, if not perfection, then a strong lemonade-sipping sigh of “If this isn’t nice, then what is?”
Practically everyone I know is leaving, vacationing, breaking up, moving on, deserting, or vamoosing. We did this Taiwan thing everyday with the same people, with the faces and chats and friendships, and then we approach a seemingly similar day, a day like any other, and life goes and changes it all.
Suddenly what I took for granite is eroding. They’ll never watch me park my scooter again without thinking of that day.
I’ve always been sensitive to change. To difference. To bizarro-world. I’m afraid of death like I’m afraid of going downstairs and finding my favorite dumpling shop has closed.
I, in my head, understand that everything has to change, evolve, come full circle, etc., but in that part of my head that regulates my feelings, in that part, I still feel sad. And I don’t think that will ever change.
I don’t think I want that to change.
