"Hanging" in there

Curt stepped outside because it was nice outside, much nicer than it was inside, and that is why he stepped outside. He started to walk, without the dogs. The dogs were inside. They were inside where it was not as nice as it was outside. But, Curt thought, it was nicer to walk without the dogs right now, than it was to walk with them, and so he walked without the dogs, outside, where it was nicer than it was inside. He thought about something he'd read after work, tired. How true it seemed to him: I'd never known anything else but this, to look at how the time goes past, to have someone do and do for me until there was nothing left for me to do.

I have been holding on, Curt thought. This whole time, I have been holding on.

Oh, how he looked then! Walking like he'd broken a small sensitive bone in his foot. He wanted to cry. But how embarrassing that would be, he said aloud. To cry on a day like this? But he didn't feel...right and then there was the world around him, bright and moving and he thought he'd stepped into a fun house. He was breathing, it seemed, through his eyes and his mouth was moving without his thinking, opening and closing and opening and closing.

I have been holding on. Hanging in there, he thought. For much too long.





Reader. If you've fallen and found yourself gripping onto the ledge of a precipice, you find you have two options. You can climb back to the surface, or you can let go. But before you make a choice, you hang on, desperate to live. If you pull yourself up, where do you find yourself? You walk home, shaken, and take a shower. You eat your supper, like every other night. You may tell someone that you were close, close to falling...where to, exactly, and this is how you live--much like before.
If you let go, you fall, fast. Sooner or later you will hit, something. In this case, you live with intensity and a furious passion. It is brief, but imagine that kind of life.



Curt felt that he could pull himself up or he could let go. He could pull himself up, or he could let go.

I can pull myself up, or I could let go.

Pull myself up.

Let go.