Reentry

There's a special place when things hit the fan and you can't properly function so you go through things in a haze because at that point you're living moment to moment instead of working on your five year plan and welcome to the human race because we're all just trying to survive and not be trampled and crushed beneath our failing plans and impossible dreams and the regrets of having never made that step or made that call or made something of yourself until you are punted from the safe place you've made for yourself with your curated friends and your careful routines so when the world shifts you're left out in space with nothing under your feet except the vague notion that you're supposed to be on that planet that is speeding in the other direction.

The world is so small when you're outside of all of the things that used to matter with your state of shock and your crushing grief and the knowing that things cannot will not ever go back to the way things were because there are fewer stars that you'll never see again and the night sky won't ever look the same way it did because the world you live in today will not be the world you live in tomorrow and right now you're not on any sort of world because you've been cut astray but it gives you just a tiny bit of clarity and you realize the whole thing has gone quite mad and you're just not in the mood to laugh with the rest of the crowd because sometimes everything makes sense if only for a moment and that's what it means to be on the outside because fish don't think much about water and humans don't think much about air until we are far outside enough of our own filth to realize that's not how things are supposed to be.

Supposed to be is a dangerous phrase.

Eventually you have give whatever line is keeping you from completely disconnecting a firm tug and send yourself back on course to rejoin the world in all it's terrors and triumphs because space is an inhospitable place full of existential quandaries that cannot be traveled because of a lack of friction and a lack of direction because there's no real way to distinguish what is up and what is down because all you really have is yourself and the world that is tugging you along and you go in for reentry and you burn burn burn burn up as you fling yours back into the alien places that you grew up in and where you go to work and you're positive the burned mass that is your face is horrible and disfigured but no one seems to notice and that sets you on edge because how can't they see that you're not who you used to be and when they pass around the condolence card it'll be addressed to someone else that you aren't anymore but one of them will lean in and express how impressed they are that you're doing so well and they'd never be able to be as strong as you.

You know you're not strong though.

Eventually you'll get back to doing human things with your curated friends and your careful routines and you'll forget how you suffocated in space for awhile because the big awe inspiring events can only be held onto for so long before the minuscule pangs of life will take center stage and you'll go about your day in such a similar way to what you were that you'll sometimes forget that you aren't that person anymore but something will stop you and you'll remember it again as the sky burns around you and all you have left is the fall and it'll pass with a blink and bloodless lips and an awkward pause in a conversation that you'll tightly chuckle your way through because your mask slipped a little and your tormented form was exposed and you know you might have survived the landing but you still burnt up.