The astronaut

I will begin now by speaking to you of the view. To me, it resembles nothing so much as 1998, or at least how I remember 1998 looking. There was no tether in those days yet the view was very much the same.

I pray this analogy works, by the end. I, whose analogies so rarely work. In it – in this analogy of mine – I am an astronaut and you are all standing there in amazement, looking up, wide-eyed at my record-breaking feat.

At my spacewalk, I mean.

And this is the way that it always feels, exactly, for me, after a fourth day of sobriety. The distance between my spaceship and me, it’s so great now as to seem nearly as though I might never return. I will return. But with each of the moments that pass, it feels like pushing the record that much further.

Perhaps one more night!

Perhaps even one more night.

“In science news this morning, Harry Hamid has spent his fifth consecutive day floating in space outside his spaceship. It’s now his longest spacewalk since September 2014. Should he manage a sixth day, it would be his longest stretch since way back in 2009…”

I take these spacewalks of mine with one hand always on the tether. Firmly. See? On the tether. The cord that connects me to my spaceship.

My spaceship being a bottle in this analogy, it is supposed, and my great accomplishment not really an accomplishment at all to anyone but someone like me. Someone trying to remember what the view in 1998 looked like.

I am an astronaut. I am five days out.

Watch me go!

“Oooooh!” “Aaaaah!”