In a forest, two paths diverged

Let’s play a super weird game,

Call out the Greek myth you most identify with.

You know, cool snake hair like Medusa, colossal muscles like Hercules, a bull man in your basement, that weird Leda thing. Mine is the story of Icarus.

Growing up I was cautioned about being too smart, too sassy, too proud. Too brash, too bold, too mouthy. The Meek shall inherit the Earth, the quiet shall escape the jaws of the wolf. Cinderella waits for her prince to come, the first man she kisses will be the last man she kisses.

So, I became beige instead of peacock blue like I had meant to be, I held my tongue and didn't ask questions, swallowed my voice and only spoke in whispers.

I read Harlequin Romances in my closet when I was 14 so my Mother wouldn't know. I snubbed the best friend I ever had on her first day of high school because she was a "bad influence." I taught Sunday School and cooked casseroles.

I tried to become the good daughter, the good mother, the good wife. I got intricate tattoos that I hid under my sleeves at work. I snapped back the smart answer so my boss could look good. I became a pro at Cream of Mushroom soup.

But I never really fit, not really. I could not make casual acquaintances, or work friends, or friends with benefits. I could only have true-blue, once in a lifetime friends and lovers. I became that person that you either get or you don't. And most people don't.

So I try. I work a 9 to 5 even though I dream of garden fresh collard greens and fat ponies in my yard. I wear a name tag and have a lunch hour. I commute when I would rather be having coffee with my dogs. I go to sleep and in my dreams, I am the person that I could become.

So here I am at 47. Still the weird one at the table, now instead of the benches and chocolate milk of elementary school, it is now shrimp canapes with the in-laws or crudités at the board meeting. There are still side eyes and whispers when I blurt out the last great thing I read or tell the guy across from me he should go see a dermatologist about that suspicious spot on his nose. Still odd-man out, now just a higher functioning weirdo.

So now what? Do I break free of the reins of domesticity? Run free, scared into the unknown and find my own path. Or do I stay safe; wake up, take out the dogs, have coffee, work 10 hours, play Solitaire on my phone, and go to sleep. Next day, same until I retire or die in the traces like a rented mule.

The version of Icarus that I tell myself, it ends with Icarus flying safe, halfway from the sky to the water. He lands in the suburbs, buys a split-level ranch with an in-ground pool, and becomes an accountant. He lives a long life, dying of cancer in the nursing home (a nice care center, of course), and had a well attended funeral. I wonder, though, in those last moments of my Icarus, if he wished he had flown into the sun. While he shrank away with the cancer in a sterile white hushed home, did he wish?

That he had died ablaze, with his feathers burning like the Phoenix. His retinas full of sunlight, blind to all but the light. He would have fallen like a beautiful comet into the blue Aegean. He would have never had to compromise, to camouflage his true self for a pension plan and good insurance.

Or was he grateful for a life mostly modicum, but with the occasional heart stopping moment. Like the laugh of his children, the sunset that comes over the lake, the first time he heard that one band; a labradorite life, just a dull gray sheened stone but when the light hits it just right, the blaze of the cosmos.