Headed back out there.
Few friends hold back the river with a leisurely dinner or coffee break. A buoyed pause midday, midweek, mid-month, just before or after blisters of anxiety and insecurity tremble to pop in lonely water. Somehow, we find ourselves downriver together. We get there separately, most often rafting down different rivers altogether, intersecting for a moment long enough to see clarity in the whites of kind and understanding eyes. I gather direction here, both forward and back.
When I am by these friends’ sides, I am in a rare unmoving form, a version of myself who is not in transit. I am not rushed by the river’s push or concerned with paddling into or away from it. By whatever force they carry, the river stops, held back briefly but fully. And for whatever the duration of our visit, I am standing present, planted precisely where I intend to be.
In their good company, I find a person of my own mind who I hope leaves with them in theirs. This version of myself is honest and genuine, and therefore unfit for other company, cowering somewhere I’ve never found along the river. But on the safety of our quiet bank, this person, this me, talks and talks and laughs and laughs and laughs deep from a belly full of comfort (and often comfort food). I weave in and out of context, cat pictures, professional disappointments, technological troubleshooting. These few friends see the jumping connections and fill in the missing spaces so I don’t have to waste our precious time together doing that for them.
Reciprocally, I invite their missing spaces. I try not to pry because I’m curious but clumsy, and I wonder if or how I’ve held back their river. Sometimes it’s clear we are both wading because they share something with me that was difficult or wrong. I try to square not having been there and am left thinking about how I should have been, questioning how I could have been. They don’t need me, but I remember distant days, before we each drifted away, when we rode our bikes together on solid land. That was a different life.
Once these friends go on their way, the river begins again. At first, it’s slow, reenergizing. At some point, without my noticing, it rages faster perhaps than it had before, and the spray stings. The river is distracting and consuming, and I’ve found no other way to hold it back, so I ride along worrying that I might fall into its uncertain depths. Months, miles, or both are the measure of my next stop and start again.
Across the country, across the sea, across town, passing strangers, dark nights, the wet of our wills, the lonely water won’t let us wander, but I look for you always.
Inspired by Hold Back the River by James Bay.