3-2-1...

Lately I have been living moments that just feel like they are in slow motion. I feel like they are critical scenes in the movie of my life. I even walk out of those moments with a song in my head that is playing in the background.

Yesterday was one such event. I was riding the train home from a late day at school. It is the middle of the nightly rush hour and there was a fire at one of the stations, so the Red line of the subway was shut down for a while. Luckily I had a seat. The train was packed beyond capacity.

I am not taking pain medicine when I go to school so that I know when I am pushing myself too hard. I was fatigued and starting to hurt a little. I managed to fall asleep. I was awakened several stops later by my old best friend in Boston.

We had had a falling out several months back and I hadn’t spoken to her since. Add in our failed romance, mixed friends, and high drama all around. Maybe it was the rarity of the situation; that we would happen to be in the same car of the same train on a nightmarishly packed commute, maybe it was just long over due, but whatever the reason we talked. It was over another person, but we talked.

It brought healing to me, that I had been seeking in that particular relationship. I had patched what I could a long time ago but there was still pain... on both sides, I’m sure.

As we screeched around the bend into Harvard Square everything went into slow motion.

Cue R.E.M. - Everybody Hurts

I stand up; I do my side hobble with my cane past the person we had been talking over and looking at the floor, so I don’t trip or hit anyone with my cane, slide past her; our coats brush. Everyone moves silently out of my way to give me room and I turned to look at her as I get to the door, she has taken a seat; we smile at each other and I step off the train. The doors close behind me and I begin hobbling down the platform. I look at the back of her head, through the giant tinted glass window, until she passes me as the train speeds off.

I don’t know if she turned to look at me out the window after she passed, but that would be the next clip of the scene, whether she did or not. Then a quick shot of hundreds of people rushing past me as I slowly hobble down the platform.

cut