cliff’s edges.

There are a lot of ways to fall off a cliff.

Metaphorically speaking. (I guess literally too.)

Some days I get dangerously close. (I’m rolling with the metaphorical version of the cliff jumping today.)

The thoughts in my mind are strong and demanding.

And they take many forms.

Lately, the thought that has me dangling my legs on the cliff’s edge is the death of my mother . . .

far too soon
when she was far too young
when I still wanted so much more time
and I was too young myself to recognize how badly I would need more time

because there was just so much I never knew I would need to ask.

This thought too has been heavy on me lately.

Will I die young too?

And what hurts the most about that cliff jumping thought is what the cost of that young death would be to my children.

Because I know what it feels like to say goodbye too soon.

To be too young to know what I don’t know, to even guess at what I would long to know later.

To sit with all that not knowing.

I don’t want that for them.

That’s not my only cliff thought, of course. Some are less heavy. My capacity for mentally diving off an edge is deep and wide. It’s shocking in its strength and diversity.

Shoot, my mind can fall off a cliff when I think about an every day task – like driving a car.

London asked, “Do you ever drive a car and think – Oh, if it wasn’t for that little yellow line, we’d all be dead all the time. Sure, everyone – obey the rules, okay? Just stay on your side and I’ll stay on mine.”

Yes, London. I think this. I think this every day and more so now that so many of my own children can drive vehicles around town without me. Little metal boxes at high rates of speed alongside morons texting and face timing at high rates of speed in little metal bullets of their own.

I. Don’t. Like. It.

The list of options for which I can leap off the cliff’s edge is long and shifting. It’s occasionally rational and most often rises to the surface when I most need it to simmer down in unhealthy little cesspools beneath the false calm.

On my list would appear a few universal fears – symptoms of a terminal illness, harm and injury to my children, financial ruin. You know the regular and comfortable fears. And then of course I can add in plenty of less rational ones – my children will think I did a bad job raising them, I’ll go blind and be unable to care for myself, early onset dementia will cause me to be a burden to my kids. It would be no problem to fill up this screen with more of these.

But hey, I don’t want to be greedy here.

My friend Emma, who is NOT a complainer in any way, used to tell her whining kids, “Fine. I’m setting a timer. You have to keep complaining for three whole minutes.”

Of course, most kids couldn’t make it to three whole minutes. (I have a few kids who most definitely could.)

So, let’s set a pretend timer and complain together for a few minutes.

What thoughts or worries or fears cause you to jump off that cliff in your mind?

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