The Perfect Plan

 
This place can be a refuge and a place of growth. It can be a place of acceptance and support. Other times it is a dark, damp, smelly basement where it is hard to breathe without choking on the darkness.
Lately I feel trapped in this basement. I shut and locked the door behind me then swallowed the key. I hide here. It keeps me safe from the isolation it helped create. I am here because I need people. I am here because I want to be away from people.
Once in a while I vomit up the key. During the rougher times I just shit it out but, when I am feeling pretty, I puke. Key in hand, I run up the basement steps, fumble with the lock, throw open the door and stumble into the light.
The landscape is overgrown with weeds and wildflowers. Patches of bright orange tiger lilies dot what used to be the front yard. Some structures have all but fallen down, only their skeleton remains. The intact buildings have been overtaken with lush, green vines. The whole effect is that of wild, unkempt beauty. Kind of like the girl you see on an early Saturday morning buying coffee and a pack of gum at the 7-Eleven.
As I begin my resurfacing into the world, the second from the top tread breaks under my foot, scraping my shin and sending me ass over teacup to the bottom of the porch steps. I look back and see the steps have rotted and Queen Ann's Lace is growing up through the splits in the wood. It has been a very long time since anyone has climbed those stairs to knock on my door. They kept coming, kept knocking, but I didn't answer so they went away.
(Queue Elton John's, 'Empty Garden'. My angst ridden mental farts cannot compare to the tragedy that inspired this song, but it is such a beautiful song one should not miss a chance to listen to it. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yiojs9Ag5Q  ).
Standing now, I look down the hill and see a river dancing in the sunlight. Over the river is a bridge, rotted from years of disuse. Heavy ropes hold it together but even the ropes look weathered and worn. On the other side of the river I see my friends, people I love, friends I haven't met yet and lovers I haven't kissed.
So much time spent alone in a dark, cold, cramped basement sustained only by a freezer stocked with ice cream and pizza rolls has taken its toll. I am pale, weak and bloated. I can't do more than doggie paddle and am afraid of heights.
I sit down to think. How will I get to the other side? How will I get strong enough to get to the other side? There is a lot of thinking going on and sometimes I really want to go back to the basement. At least it is safe there. It is predictable. Nothing can hurt me in the basement, neither can make me laugh, hold me or love me either. All the love I have to give gets sent out to some other plane of consciousness and dissipates into meaningless energy.
I had figured out the perfect plan as well as the perfect time to execute it then I realized that it would fail. The perfect time would never come because it required the perfect me. I will never be perfect. I will slowly cross the worn out bridge, holding on for dear life. When I fall, I will land in the water that isn’t as deep as it looks and come up snarfing water out of my nose. When my friends recover from laughing they will throw me a rope so I can pull myself ashore. Good friends can hold you, love you and laugh at you all at the same time. This is the perfect plan.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiYUzYozsAQ