the event: the collision

The event: the collision


Reflecting she reflected that it had gone something like this:


First there was the event: the collision;
Then came the reflection: the regret.

But after, there is the telling: the release.
(At least that’s our hope).


He tapped her on the shoulder and they hugged. Perhaps for too long and too tight, or, at least that was what she thought after. But that was after, that was in the reflection: the regret. The event was not like the reflection; and it is with the event that I must begin.

For, it was unlike anything she had experienced. With normal things and normal thoughts, she told me, things are normal, thoughts are logical, they move forward one after the next: logically. But this was not like that. This, she said, was instead, closer to, and much more like: “a collision, a blur of many things” – thoughts emotions, images – the smell of his hair; the color of his shoes; when he last said the word love; and strangely, the sense of having held on too tight, and for too long. Questions came too but not in the right order, and then, most got left behind.

She looked and talked and smiled and laughed; outwardly her composure (betrayed only by a slight coloring of the cheeks) was faultless as he took her number and told her he’d ring soon. But internally, she was rocked; in turmoil, as (and right before her eyes), the event: the collision was born, arose and then passed away; dying, going nowhere; and leaving only:

Silence: vibrating; stinging, full with regret.

The collision had left its mark: a certain ringing in the ears, a vibration through the body which remained, continued, living on despite the events passing. All day, (and for many days after, in fact) the thoughts, the emotions and images continued, were repeated, returned to again and again, seeming, she explained later, to “wash like the tide,” and even, and worse, to “rage like a storm.” Because, along with the thoughts that continued to vibrate (but which faded and died in time), came also the regrets: things which are also thoughts and which also vibrate, but which also seem, painfully, to cling, and to bite and did not fade or die with time.


“I should have said…” “Why didn’t I ask…” – and this time, and most important – “did I hold on too tight, and for too long?”

Do they come to us all, these regrets?

She said that she was sure that they must. But then, of course, she couldn’t really be sure. And even if they do, she explained, that didn’t actually help her. Not really; not her thinking “here and now” anyway. And so she did the only thing she could do. She tried, “in spite of everything”, to continue on with life, ignoring, banishing, that “vile and petty voice that clouds everything.”

And she did her best, I watched, I saw, as she twisted herself up like some twisted nun, guarding, guarding ever guarding. But it was a painful struggle (and one that she could never have won). For, he didn’t call; and the regrets are sneaky; and they have a “sneaky way of getting into your mind”, even when they are banished. And so they bit and they clung. And the doubt just grew, and multiplied and the bite became a wound and the wound became infested and has spread. So that now, after the thoughts, the emotions and the images all have faded, going: nowhere; these questions: the regrets remain. And it is now onto these which she holds “too tight”. And it has certainly been for too long.

And so we need, and this in fact has been: the telling: the release.

(Or that is our hope).