Clarity

I was just walking, nothing special, one of those autopilot moments where your body moves and your mind is somewhere else entirely. Then, out of nowhere, I caught my foot on… honestly, I still don’t know what. Maybe pride. And suddenly I was falling. You know that split second where your brain realizes what’s happening but your body hasn’t accepted it yet? That weird in-between? That’s where it happened. While I was flailing, trying to recover, hoping no one noticed, something in my head just… clicked. Not about the fall, not about how to save it, that ship had sailed. It was something I’d been stuck on for ages, something I kept turning over, making complicated, almost proudly confused. And mid-air, of all places, it became obvious. Like embarrassingly obvious. I remember thinking, “wait… that’s it?” while also thinking, “this is going to hurt.” A rhyme even popped in, completely uninvited, like my brain wanted to make sure I really got it: I missed the clue, I missed it twice, turns out the answer was painfully nice. Then I hit the ground. There was a small pause, the kind where you decide whether to stay down forever or pretend it never happened. A couple of people looked over, one trying not to smile. I got up, brushed myself off, gave a half-shrug like, yeah, sure, gravity happens. But inside, I was laughing. Not just at the fall, but at the timing of it. Years of not getting it, and then suddenly, clarity decides to show up exactly when I’m least in control. Not when I was thinking hard. Not when I was trying. Just… when I tripped.