Elisabeth Strouse

And Then There's Reality

What caused this particular facet of reality to be an ending doesn’t matter quite so much as what it means. It means that I am standing on the demolished remains of what used to be; that I’m rebuilding life on the wreckage of the old; that I am doing it alone; and then there’s whatever reality is but I’ll get to that later, or rather it will get to me. For now, though I let out a reality latent sigh. Reality’s nature is such that it always exists and only exists as it does. There’s what is and what isn’t. Period. The fact that us mere mortals are always somewhere in between understanding, which is which, is our own problem and if it ever has been, it is my problem today. The relationship that just ended was over before it started. It was always never going to work. It took me a period of five years, sixteen days and twenty-five minutes to understand that, but not for one moment was it ever going to end up any place but here. The way I see it, with experience and a little grace the goal of the human experience is to shorten that period between knowing what is from what isn’t; to get so comfortable with reality that we can live within it in real time, rather than inevitably accepting its verdict after a long hard fight with varying amounts of dignity lost.