Small Towns in Norway

However, not all the people who were having lunch on a summer afternoon in an Australian small town forgot the story. No one has had nightmares about that day except for one. Only I have kept waking up in a cold sweat for many years, when those ten seconds come back to haunt me at night, without the happy ending of me running over a log; for the rest of them it was nothing more than a fender dent.

Nothing bad happened that afternoon or later in my life. It has been many years since that incident and my life has been a haven in which the irreversible has never tested my audacity to commit suicide. Why is it then, that I still find this afternoon when I did not kill anybody more important than, for instance, the day of my birth or my wedding? Why is it that, sometimes, I still wake up in the middle of the night without being able to breathe, remembering vividly the intense cold of a small town cabin in Norway, wrapped in the ragged blankets of cowardice, anguish and exile; drowning in the guilt of not having the valor to kill myself?

It might be the fragility of peace that makes uncertainty so chilling. It might be the astounding speed of misfortune, lurking like a predator in the still of the night, hidden, waiting patiently to take everything from us and leave us clinging to a steering wheel; thinking that the only option is to die alone in a cabin in Norway. Fortunately, it is -almost- always a log and life goes on, peacefully. But we all know, under all the laughter and love and sex and nights with friends and books and music and food, that it is not always a log. Sometimes, it is Norway.