The Wall - by Shade

I turned 27 at midnight (fuck I’m old) and the first thing I felt was ennui. Not the birthday blues I’d braced for, not the usual inventory of everything I haven’t done yet. Nothing came. Just the date changing and me, still there, vaguely disappointed that I wasn’t sadder. I wondered briefly if that’s what sobriety does to milestone moments.Then the gratitude came, slow and unprompted, and that surprised me more than the ennui did. If I had a cent for every time I had a near-fatal collision with a wall, I’d have Two Cents. It’s not much. It’s also wild that it’s happened twice. The first time I was a toddler. My dad had pulled up to drop me at Kindergarten, left the engine running, dashed back inside to grab something in sixty seconds, maybe less. I was alone in the front seat. The gate was already open. At some point, curious little me most likely reached for the gear stick and pushed it into reverse, because the next thing that happened was the car rolling backward across a highway by itself, except it wasn’t really by itself. It collided with a wall on the other side. A company building, as it turned out and I had not a scratch on me. (A/N: Everytime this comes up, I can’t help but wonder how my parents felt in that moment, best believe Sunday Thanksgiving was lit) That wall saved my life and I spent years treating that fact like a fun story to tell at parties. The second time was two decades later. Empty stomach after a long day of classes, substances (don’t you just love college living), an experience so far outside my body I still don’t have the right language for it. I heard something that felt like God. My soul, in that moment, seemed genuinely ready to leave. I got off without a scratch again, same as the first time, older and somehow more surprised by it.I’ve always been more curious than reckless, for the record. The experiences found me more than I went looking for them. But sitting with 27 now, both of them feel less like fun stories and more like the kind of thing you’re supposed to take seriously before something makes you.A few weeks ago I fell into a rabbit hole of True Crime videos; young kids, teenagers, lives that ended or unraveled before they had a chance to understand what they were holding. I don’t know what I expected to feel watching them. What actually came up was something simpler and harder to articulate than sadness. Just the weight of being here. The strange luck of it.We spend a lot of time feeling hopelessly stuck in what we want and don’t have yet. That’s not a character flaw, it’s just what being human costs. But there’s a clarity that shows up in the moments right after a bad illness, a close call, a thing that could’ve gone differently and didn’t. Whatever was heavy stops registering. You’re just glad to be breathing. Only the living get to be hungry. Only the living get to be sad.

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