A Guided Tour

The mind rarely wastes a catastrophe.

Perhaps I am not okay.

It’s difficult to tell. The mind is a talented interior decorator. It can hang velvet curtains over structural damage. It can place flowers on a sinkhole and convince you the garden has never looked healthier.

I’ve been wandering my own head again.

It’s an old place now. Drafty corridors. Staircases that arrive at locked doors. Rooms filled with abandoned explanations, all carefully labeled in handwriting I no longer recognize. Somewhere in there, a committee is still arguing about something that stopped mattering three winters ago. I pass them sometimes. They never look up.

Lately I’ve become suspicious of the newest construction.

A magnificent theory.

The collapse was necessary.

Of course it was. It had to happen. The losses. The humiliations. The long afternoons spent staring at the ceiling as though it contained secret instructions. It was all preparation. A hurried rebirth. Necessary demolition before better architecture. My mind presented the argument with such confidence that I nearly applauded.

Convenient, isn’t it?

Every ruin becomes a cathedral if you’re patient enough with the narration.

I wonder if that’s what I’ve been doing.

Not healing.

Curating.

Arranging the broken pieces until they resemble intention. Calling the wreckage “foundation” because the alternative is admitting I simply crashed into something in the dark.

There’s something almost funny about it. I picture a man standing in the smoking remains of his own house, giving guided tours.

The fire was essential. Very transformative. The kitchen had become spiritually limiting.

Everyone nods because nobody wants to interrupt a lunatic while he’s making excellent eye contact.

I don’t know.

Perhaps the collapse was necessary.

Or perhaps I just needed it to mean something large enough that I could keep walking through the ash without feeling ridiculous.

Tomorrow I’ll probably believe the first version again.

The committee prefers it.

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More soon.

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