the bridge
[excerpt from chapter]
For me it was this specific bridge and looking down at the water. It was on my walk back and forth from the doctor’s office every 3 weeks, every 6 weeks, 3 months, how ever often I had to go back. And other times too. And in winter it was more. Due to the power plant up river and its use of river water to cool the plant, our river never fully freezes over. And there is this part just near the edge, close to where the snow-covered ice meets the water where the ice must be thin. And there is this feeling, what it would be like to hit that ice, to break through to the cold underneath, to be fully enveloped by the millions of simultaneous pain pricks. To be completely overwhelmed. It’s this feeling. And although the bridge is long gone and it has been so long since I have been able to walk over it, I still remember that feeling, that feeling I have never actually experienced. All those other experiences from high school, from my early 20s, even though they actually happened, they lack the intensity of that, even after all these years. It feels like the external finally matching the internal. Perhaps even, the external being able to overwhelm the internal. And it feels like freedom.
