I used to curse myself - really curse myself – for falling down. If my life was a journey which at some point included clambering over rocks, I was split into two characters: one big man who could leap across the stone in sturdy boots and look outward to the rising mountains; and one small girl, who had inappropriately dressed in her party shoes and dress for a big occasion, for whom the gaps between the rocks were ravines, and so who slipped often and cut her hands. She cried, he shouted. His big legs transported him many rocks ahead, while she sat sniveling many rocks behind. This tiring girl was holding him back. His voice would boom in rage and despair back at her and echo off the hills and echo all through her head. She was a dead weight and a waste of time and she shouldn’t be there; he was full of rage, getting nowhere, with disappointment inching up his spine like cold water, and they were both hopeless. All a bit patriarchal, right? And tiring. 

I don’t fully know why the shouting stopped. In the practical sense, maybe he could see it wasn’t working. In the darker sense, maybe he saw that if he kept on, he would lose her to the rocks. Too many tears and too many tantrums. Too many sharp ragged things around. I’d like to think that the longer the pair spent together he began to feel relieved on the days when she would laugh. He began to slow his pace to linger in this, and then began to listen in to the little stories she muttered to the stones beneath her feet. She began to include him, and even though they were poorly constructed with almost no plot and too many characters, he began to find them as a source of joy. Something else to keep him going, other than the distant promise of mountains.  

Eventually, and in spurts, I’m hesitant to say, he began to love her. When she was afraid, he stopped himself from bounding ahead, and instead, he held her hand. Just a small jump, you can make that one easy, look I’ll help you. It began to matter less to him that he reached the mountains and matter more to him that she was okay that day. When she would fret that she was holding him back he would ask her for another fantastical story to keep them both going. And when she would ask if they were nearly there, he would say, “We’re not in a rush. We’ll get there when we get there”.