[008] Prodigal
A 21st century breakdown.
You’re filling up at a Pilot station when you see them. Two cars parked at the very edge of the gas station. You recognize the hand-off immediately.
Anyone from a divorced family would.
The children, a boy and girl who both seem to be under 5, move between vehicles. Mom gives a friendly wave to the kids before closing the door to Dad’s car. The only fighting happens between the parents and the car seats, but only because neither adult speaks to the other during the entire interaction.
Sorry, kiddos, you think. It’ll get better after awhile. Even as a child you understood that it would have been so much worse if they stayed together, and that wisdom is exactly as useless to you now as it was back then.
The unwelcome reminder comes at a time when your system was already on very high alert. Not an hour before that moment you had just been sitting with a pastor, a veterinarian, and several people you hadn’t seen in 30 years as your mother collapsed into paroxysms of grief over the body of her last remaining dog.
You’ve had better days.
It’s hours later, just past 10, when you feel the first defenses fall.
Warning systems. Fail-safes. Firewalls. Barricades and trenches running like Maginot Lines through the circuitry of your consciousness. You’ve erected dozens of them in recent years, and every single one is designed with a singular purpose: structural stability.
Your clothes begin to itch, then they suffocate you. You not only feel but also hear the pounding of your heart. Your breathing echoes in your ears. Sensations, noises, everything is either too loud or too close.
You’ve learned a lot in recent years. You recognize this moment for what it is: overstimulation. You also understand that sometimes you can steer away from the skid, but other moments require you to steer into it.
You take a shower and blast some 80s pop. Your system immediately resets.
The next afternoon you visit your alma mater for a meet-and-greet with a candidate. So much has changed. So many buildings have been demolished. Even as a relatively recent alumnus you seem to be running out of recognizable classrooms. Nearby, in the town that abuts the campus, restaurants that you’ve never heard of have already come and gone.
The library still smells the same, though.
You walk through the main part of campus. Nostalgia fills your heart with a pungent bouquet of emotion. The memories come flowing back. You see faces without names. You think of names but can’t remember faces.
Years ago, in another life, you called this place home. A part of you thought it always would be. But campus is quiet now. Too quiet. It doesn’t feel like very long ago when the sidewalks would be packed during class change, but those days died along with all the people taken by the pandemic.
It’s this perspective, visible in a split screen that spans decades, that lays bare the invisible scars that run through our society.
You go home. You eat your favorite food. You cuddle your dogs. You watch TV. You rest, and you pledge to do better tomorrow.
The moments in which the weight of your heart exceeds the weight of the world are the moments when you need to give yourself some grace.
A lesson you learned the hard way, but one that is not easily forgotten.
“I was made of poison and blood
Condemnation is what I understood
Video games to the tower’s fall
Homeland Security could kill us all
My generation is zero
I never made it as a working-class hero
21st century breakdown
I once was lost, but never was found
I think I’m losin’ what’s left of my mind
To the 20th century deadline”
Green Day, “21st Century Breakdown”