Trust Falls
When L's headphones stopped working, her boyfriend gave her his back up pair. He warned her that if he ever lost his primary pair, then he would need them back. Two years later, he did and so the headphones floated back out of her life.
She didn't buy new ones. "I figured they'd find me, when I needed them," she explained with a toss of her long braid. One day, she was visiting friends when one of them noticed her old laptop: "You still have an aux port?" he said, "wait a minute, I have these old headphones that won't work with my new laptop. Do you want them?"
And so, headphones floated back into her life.
I was listening to L tell this story through an open cabin door, her hands moving expressively.
Trustfalls I thought. There are people I know like that, people who seem to trustfall into the world around them. The ones who believe that they have enough and when they need, the world will deliver.
That is not my natural mode. I am a burrower, a hoarder. At night, I clench my jaw. Three weeks ago I woke up crying from the pain of it.
"You have un-naturally strong jaw muscles," my dentist tells me. I wonder what kind of jaw muscles are considered natural in 2025.
The truth is, in my heart, even when I know better, I want to make a tight barricade of stuff against the world for me and the people I love.
I want a spot on the ship, because I don't believe I'll float when the waters rise. I wonder sometimes, what it is to believe in a world that loves you back.
But maybe that's not how trustfalls work.
Maybe it's not about a loving world. Or even about trust. Maybe it's just a hope of being caught ...And the knowledge that no matter what the outcome is, you'll be okay.