Okay

My jaw throbs as I drive towards home, the muscles on the left side of my face creating shadows in the harsh light coming through the window. I clench and release, clench and release, grinding the flat surfaces of my teeth against each other in punishment as I weather the million tiny annoyances of a day. Beyond watching out for the other drivers I'm only vaguely aware of my surroundings or the storm in my head, but I know it's there. Somehow it's come to always be there.

I stop behind a red soft-top Jeep with a loosely hanging thick plastic window. This feels like the hundredth delay of my short commute. They recently changed the timing of the lights at this intersection and it never works in my favor. Two lanes of traffic leave the Naval hospital and head towards the tunnel, crowding across the intersection like rats mobbing at the edge of a sinking ship. Apparently I've caught this light right as it's turned red because it is refusing to change. This just adds insult to the endless stream of debilitating noise crushing my teeth together.

The song playing from my phone slowly rises to its pinnacle; a complex but almost expected meld of different instruments: violins in two or more parts, a guitar making music rather than cliche guitar sounds, a xylophone, even something that sounds like a small wooden box being dropped gently as percussion. There are no words, no vocals. The individual parts each starting out quietly with their own fragile voices, joining and being joined by others as they build together. At first you can't get a handle on the tone; something precious and beautiful you loved has ended and will never be again, and the ashes of it float down around you like a grey snow.

Then the violins rise like beams of light parting heavy clouds. The other instruments follow close behind, individual rays moving over the landscape together as the sun shines into my face off a corner of the Jeep's plastic window swaying in the breeze.

And suddenly I'm held by this song I've heard fifty times. Waiting at a light and surrounded by cars my eyes brim with release as the torture of my mind is quieted. There is just the music, the sun on the windows, and the blue sky above a black canvas roof. It is like someone has come to save me at the last moment.
"Okay," I say in a voice on the edge of tears, "Okay. Okay. Okay." It's going to be okay. Everything is going to be alright. For this brief moment I believe it to be true no matter what happens later. At least I have this, now, finally.

The light changes and I turn the corner. The Jeep has gone on elsewhere and I don't see where it goes. This used to happen often but hasn't in some time. Maybe years. "Where have you been?" I ask as an aftershock moves through me briefly and is gone.

Walking in the door my family smiles at me and I'm able to genuinely smile in return. Maybe it will be okay. Who the hell knows.