Maybe you are
normal. You are the type of person who can look over the edge of a
high altitude bridge and never hear a little voice that says:
Go ahead, jump. .
You are probably the kind of person who is careful with guns and never point it directly at someone, just so you can imagine how it would feel to have violence that close to your fingertips.
If so, that is a good thing and I envy you.
I spend large hours of my life wondering about why not? and how come? and various other hypotheticals, many of them dangerous. If there is a rock to look under, I'll find it.
Late evening highways are an example of this type of thinking. Not if I am going to a place. Not if I have a destination. But if I'm alone and I'm on my way back to my apartment, sometimes I make the mistake of jumping on the interstate. It's late and traffic is moving at a blinding pace, white and chrome and red. My mind realizes that I am in a fast vehicle, that the highway connects to interstates all over the country and I could just go . I could go anywhere.
My head and arms push back into the seat in that same sudden motion you get when a rollercoaster starts uphill. Thud . For a few seconds I consider the choice.
The freedom of thousands of miles of open road and a million different mornings in places I have never been before. I could be gone and I could start a new life somewhere else and the only thing stopping it-
is me.
People do this, I know. People stop things and start other things. Thousands and thousands of people wake up one day and decide that Wednesday is not a day to go to work and they don't go. People take a left instead of a right and keep on going, everyday. Change is made for us occasionally, but mostly we change ourselves. Maybe other people make those adjustments gradually after careful consideration. I doubt that is true most of the time. I have this sense that one day the highway says the right words or the commuter train flashes the right sign and all bets are off.
Winds shift.
I have never made that choice and I probably won't jump off any bridges either. I like the comfort of where I am and the whispers go away when I turn on the CD player. I keep hoping one day I won't hear the voice quite so clearly.