Your Heart Won't Heal Right if You Keep Tearing Out the Sutures

Things stick in my head. Especially words. It makes it hard for me to be as forgiving as I know I should be, as I know I must be. If I have met you, I will most likely remember. If you have said something to me that meant anything at all, whether good or bad, I will most likely remember. This means I have the bad habit of drudging up things from the past and throwing them in your face when I am hurt. I am not making a special effort to remember, it’s just that the words stick in my head. If you said something on accident and it hurt me, I will remember. When we would fight he would sometimes say That’s not what I meant. Forget I said that. And I would always reply I can’t. Kind of a defeatist attitude, I realize, but so far I have yet to master forgetting. I am able to forgive (again, not as easily as I should) but it is the forgetting part I have so much trouble with; words stick in my head. Words are important. Knowing this, you would think that perhaps I think twice before I speak. I understand the power of words. But I say plenty of hurtful things without thinking about how they might affect others. I think this is why I love writing so much. I say the wrong thing, I delete it, I erase it, I tear it up. I have all the time in the world to word my thoughts in the manner of my choosing.

More than 3 years ago I read Life of Pi. I read the majority of it while I was home sick in bed with a 103 degree fever, and yet so much of it stuck in my head. So many passages I fell in love with. So many quotes I think about often.

“To choose doubt as a philosophy in life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”

"'If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? ... Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What’s your problem with hard to believe?'"

There are two passages in particular that have been stuck in my head today. One about fear, the other about goodbye. Fitting, I would say.

"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread."

“What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell… It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse.”

When I copied that final passage into my notebook 3 summers ago, sitting at the airport, waiting to board my airplane, I thought it was all over. I was convinced I had botched the farewell because I never had the chance to say it. I thought it was the end. But it wasn’t. It turns out that a goodbye was not necessary. It still hasn’t been, 3 years later. So maybe the goodbye I feel cheated out of this time is not necessary either. Or maybe I am refusing to participate because I am hoping to be lucky twice, to once again save myself the pain and despair of letting go of something I am absolutely not ready to be done with. Either way, I do not feel the need to rush. Not now. Tomorrow I might. I might wake up tomorrow morning longing to say goodbye. But I doubt it. I know myself better than that.

And since I wanted to post this picture two weeks ago, but my camera was lost at the time, I will post it now.

Consider it a small farewell. A way to avoid the real thing.