Words make sense to me.
Words are wondrously delicious when they walk the wooden plank and dive into the pools of your deep retinas.
Three weeks ago, my guy and I broke up. I made a conscious decision to not run from the pain of yet another loss, yet another chance to learn from another human being I was blessed to know more than superficially. The risk we take, of course, when knowing someone deeply, is that the wounds they may leave are also just as deep. Therefore, many thoughts in these past three weeks have brought tears down my cheeks, even more left to pool up behind the retaining walls of my irises, colored blue by my father and likely his parents before him, and theirs prior to that.
In the past, hot gashes to my already hurt heart would have demanded an escape, would have screamed for Novocaine in the form of cutting, overeating, or getting fucked up all day every day until the immediate danger of feeling that awful was safely hidden under scar tissue, hopefully never to resurface.
Do you have any scars on your flesh?
Are you aware of the loss of elasticity contained within the damaged tissue?
Do you know that scars still hurt a bit, even after the skin has healed, when the healthy skin surrounding the scar pulls and tugs at the resistant entity which is forever stuck within trauma?
Because it does. It will always hurt just a little, I imagine.
I saw this tree yesterday when I went out to run off my lazy sleepiness. That tree had obviously been cut across its trunk at some past point, for the tree, much like me, still carries a scar for the world to see.
It looks a bit like my arm, right?
When I saw this tree, I felt a particular kinship with it, and a fondness for what it showed me. I found that tree to be distinctly beautiful and interesting. On my good days, I also feel beautiful and interesting.
As beautiful and interesting and unique as our scars make us, I would like to see what it feels like to actually heal fully from this most recent pain; see if I can do it without yet another scar. The night we broke up, I sat on the bathroom floor, crying into the roar of the industrial-strength fan that was whirring on the sultry July night and a new thought occurred to me. I became very curious about the pain I was feeling and I realized that I was, I AM, at a point in my life where I am stronger than I've ever been. I've been through countless heartaches and traumas that make other people cringe when hearing about them. I've been living in an After School Special for at least the past decade. I wondered what it would feel like, what it would BE like, to simply allow the pain to do what it does and not do anything active to escape it. I know for a fact that I'm not fast enough to outrun it, nor wily enough to dodge it, but one thing I had not yet done with my suffering is simply accept it. See what it wants. See what it feels like to just sit with it.
What would it be like to do nothing whilst my soul cried?
So I sat. I cried but when the tears began to fade, I didn't purposely think of something sad in order to bring on more pain and tears. I decided not to run to the kitchen for alcohol or comfort food or razor blades, though all of those things were fighting to be heard and acted upon. I decided not to even write about this experience for awhile. I wanted just to sit with it.
I sat and I listened. I heard my heart cry and she sang like the most beautiful stringed instrument I've never heard. She sang to my ears only, stretching my heartstrings tightly and cascading down agonizing lullabies and promises that could never have been kept in the first place. She wailed behind my eyes and she railed about misunderstandings and the unfairness of it all. When I still didn't run from her or even protest, she sobbed like a little child and I wanted only to hold her in my arms forever. She was sad and beautiful. She still is.
It still hurts to think of him, but it isn't a constant pain. Honestly, I'm grateful that it still hurts me, that it hurt me at all, for if it didn't it would mean I never really cared for him. That isn't the case. I loved him very much, and a part of my soul will always love him, even though he isn't the man I will spend the rest of my life with. We are inherently different at our cores, and our differences do not lend themselves to lifelong compatibility in that type of a relationship. As we do love one another, it actually makes more sense to let the relationship we had go because we really weren't happy living together. I've never been through a break-up like this, where I'm sad but not destroyed, where I'm missing him but happy at the thought of the growth we're hopefully both undertaking because of knowing one another.
It's beautiful - Love. It reminds me of autumn leaves, gorgeous even as they're dying and then falling to the ground to become nourishment for the next cycle of growth. I like to ponder that image quite a bit.
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So here's to you, Good Sir, and the painfully beautiful nourishment you've given my soul. I look forward to watching how she grows in this next cycle of my life.
Love,
~Q~
