The flat’s doorbell buzzes loudly for the third time, pulling me finally from my slumber. It’s twelve o’clock on a drizzly night in December and obviously one of Dave’s friends (probably drunk and Irish) will have to be turned away. Unfortunately, the continuity of my nocturnal dreamscape will have to be sacrificed for the task.
The front hall light shines brightly through the frosted glass of our front door onto the face of someone familiar that is staring in. The face disappears as I approach, in anticipation of the opening door…
Emily had departed London in a small red Ford Fiesta a month and a half ago. She began her road trip through Europe with a 19-hour ferry ride to somewhere I’ve forgotten. Having attended the same visual arts program, circled in the same social group and worked at the same gallery, we were predisposed to a comfortable friendship. We were close by welcomed circumstance not by intensity of feeling or purposefulness of effort.
Having learned stick shift on London’s busy twisting streets, Emily set off across Eastern Europe’s fast highways in a car designed to be driven on the other side of the often recently snow-ploughed road. It’s difficult not to like Emily or admire her for such an endeavour. Without a doubt, it would be a daunting prospect for most of us, but she seemed to thrive on the challenge with an enthusiasm begot by a love of variety and a desire to prove herself.
When she left, I casually wondered if I would ever see past that enthusiasm. In all honesty, my suspicion that it guarded an interiority of a different nature could be attributed to the fact that I didn’t know her very well. Had her journey not been ravaged by the storms of life’s superior will – for life has nothing to prove – or had circumstance, which had been so kind to our friendship, not been so fickle with her affairs yesterday and today, I might never know the answer to my wondering or be so privileged.
Instead, I open the door at the turn of night and say, “Emily, come in.”
A car accident in the Czech Republic left Emily’s Fiesta in a small foreign scrap yard operated by a jolly tow truck driver with a passion for and a shed full of exotic birds. It left her two passengers unscathed and making their own way. It left a semi-truck driver a little bit behind schedule. But most importantly, it left a shaken Emily on a plane back to London with police reports (filled out in Czech), a debt to her sister (for a quick plane ticket) and thankfully, a body still in one piece.
Her trials were not over, however, with the aftershocks almost as emotionally traumatizing. The one person she longed to see, her boyfriend, misunderstood her post-accident email and cancelled his scheduled flight to Europe. In addition, (and the reason for her appearance on my door step) her family friend and base camp here in London turned her away on the wet eve of her arrival, having decided her guilty of theft, disrespectfulness and ingratitude.
Suddenly, she was accused of being responsible for everything life seemed to be.
To see someone shattered wouldn’t be so difficult if they didn’t believe in it so much. It sounds harsh but let me explain. After the realisation that we are no longer in control of the vehicle, while the thought that we should be lingers, the quicksand of fear, failure and loneliness rise so quickly that they threaten to drown us. And to avoid that death, we would do anything…anything but inaction. We would compromise our integrity; we would lie, cheat and steal to avoid admitting vulnerability. That’s how fear works.
Paradoxically, admitting weakness with integrity is the key to its mastery. This is one of life’s many lessons: it shatters us in accidents; it betrays us by turning us away; it abandons us from afar and it calls down the rain right here. It leaves us no choice, no action and no course but to admit defeat. It is to surrender that is asked of us. The measure of our resistance is the measure of our fall.
At the other end of such an experience, we realize that defeat and weakness are simply another location through which the river of life flows. They are no grander and no more despicable than any other. The river sometimes gathers in unpopular places. And if we are as beautifully lucky as Emily is, you might see some exotic birds along the way.
Tags: London