Growing Beyond the Ordinary

This is not exactly what we expected. Sometimes things carry on long past their time. It never really got anywhere. There was a brief time when it seemed as though this could become something. But it took too much time, too much effort, for something meant, at best, to be little more than something on the side, some minor diversion.

Sometimes it takes so little out of the rest of a life that it hardly seems to be there. The rest of the life carries on as if nothing has changed, and for most of it, most of that life, nothing has. There is just this one part that exists, almost completely separate from the rest of that life.

Other things, such things as this, though, are different. They may start out like those other ones, but they grow, like some out of control illness, until they take over a life completely. Like some alien intruder into some ecosystem that has no natural controls or predators, they just keep growing and growing until they take over.

She was just someone I met, going about my normal day, nothing of any great significance, just someone else to say hello to if we passed on the street. Then we met it other places: supermarket, pub, all the other places people like us, fairly near-neighbours meet is a small town like this one.

Then it grew.

Then we met at a party one night, one of those barbecues where friends and neighbours gather around to tell one another lies about their lives. We kissed at the bottom of the garden as night was falling. There was where it began.

Now, neither of us knows where it will end, or even if it will end.

 

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US)]