

Discover more from Vic Koopmans
Why the fuck am I laying in an antique hotel room somewhere along a highway in Mexico? I was supposed to be painting the picket fence white right now. I should be humming along to corny love songs, I should be grossing people out with overly public displays of affection. Yet I’m not.
Constant traffic rushes by, fierce stomach cramps make it hard to move and complicates breathing properly. The thoughts and pain inside my head are on par with the racing cars outside in the rain. I perpetually question if right choices were made. Meanwhile attempting to avoid any self pity. I might not have made this squeaky bed tonight, but for twenty bucks I do get to lay in it.
Oh, how the former bad boy loathes to be the bad guy. Causing someone pain, I despise it. Inevitable hurt is a relentless boomerang cutting open this scar tissue covered heart of mine.
Fast forward.
An early morning flight, a late morning flight and an afternoon/night flight await me. Up until the final second before boarding the first plane, I consider missing all of them. But I don’t. I don’t know why. I consider again during the first stop, I consider again during the second stop and again and again and et cetera…
Now I’m somewhere high in the sky. Far from anything or anyone I know. Beginning or continuing an adventure with an open ending. Possibly leading me back to her, possibly resulting into stories I never held imaginable.
My current train of thought would love to derail and crash, but I’ll be damned if I lose track. So I grab a belt, fill a needle and inject a dose of the purest relativity and optimism into my veins. From the overhead compartment I get my backpack and take out my life saving outfit.
I put on my white suit and my antigravity boots, polish my helmet, adjust the engines on my back and restock on jet fuel. I get up and stare blankly at the stewardess eyeballing me while overly intensely stroking a life vest.
“Not today, you subtle woman you,” I whisper.
My good friend, señor backpack, gets secured to, well… my back. After that I put on my freshly shined helmet.
An apology in advance from the amateur astronaut to the other passengers and the cabin crew, before I open the emergency exit next to the right wing, serving as my diving board.
I take a deep breath and blow a kiss towards my girl, hoping that someday soon we somehow will turn out to be perfect for each other.
Then I fire up the engines and jump. Skydiving in the deep end. Somewhere out in space. By myself once again, pursuing happiness. Keeping my feet in the air and my eyes to the sky.
A rocket man.
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