I love roller coasters. Right at the beginning, the cars pull away from the station and start their climb; clack-clack-clack the coaster climbs towards that first drop. Lately it seems, I get right to the point where the tracks start to curve and I lean forward, anticipating the impending free fall over and down the other side of the peak, only the drop doesn’t happen. We just keep climbing. Clack, clack, clack. How can it just keep going up and up and up? It defies physics….and the laws of fun and frivolity. Nothing fun can result from a free fall a mile high. Life, as of late, has been a stuttering, unsatisfying, clack-clack-clack towards nothing. No drop, no coaster ride, no resolution. It has been a perpetual, never ending climb up hill. And like every roller coaster, I’m strapped in and restrained, prevented from moving freely. It’s not fun. And while I would like to hope that THIS time, the sensation that we’re going over the top and will plummet through the twists and turns of a typical rollercoaster, I have been mislead so many times that I no longer believe this ride is designed like any standard amusement park coaster. In fact, I think somehow we might end up back at the station exiting the cars onto the opposite platform with some park employee telling us that the ride is over.
It’s a mystery. I am stymied. But I am still strapped in, locked down and unable to change the course of this ride until it returns to the station. I got on this thing voluntarily. I met the height requirements. I really WANTED to ride. I still want to ride….but all it seems to be doing is clack-clack-clack to nowhere.