Shots Fired.

“Your call.”

Two words. That’s all it took to send me over the edge of the angry cliff I’ve been dancing on the edge of for weeks. Your call.

But it isn’t my call. It hasn’t been my call for years. It’s their call and his call and others’ call but never my call. And even when it’s supposed to be my call, it isn’t. Because, visible or not, someone or something else is always calling the shots.

Two words that pushed me out the door on to the cold, dark streets past midnight, coyotes and other nocturnal predators my only companions. Cold tears blur the path ahead, a path once clear now littered with doubt and uncertainty and risk, and my chest seizes with fear against the dark and the loneliness that greets me at every turn. While the world around me sleeps, I race to escape those two words that mean so little to everyone else, but everything to me.

Schedules built around others and their priorities and what they want and when they want it. Never what I need and want and when I need and want it. No protection. No support.  No one to shield me against the rapid fire. To dry my tears when they fall. To catch me when I stumble.

We’re in the middle of the gauntlet, a six-month stretch of milestones and holidays that only serve to proclaim in garish Hallmarked fashion that I am, supposedly, calling the shots on my own. I’m facing a minefield of memories that has dragged on for years, looking to a horizon forever in the distance. 

Shots fired. None of which are my call.