Everyone has’em. Some, more often than others, depending on environment and emotional circumstance. (I am not here touching on the chemical.)

Today was a little bit of a rough one. In 2017, I wrote the following –

beneath the softness
where longing builds her home
is where i miss him.

-how the anger saves me

…and today is a day swallowed whole by this feeling. It crept up, and it has been relentless.

Years ago, a beloved said “You can want to cut a bitch but still miss them,” and this has stuck with me since the day she spoke it while we walked along McLeod Street.

I am starting to understand myself a lot more these days, and to exercise patience with who I am getting to know. There are growing pains, and though there are days when I wish to bloody knuckles against syllabus, I am always (eventually) grateful.

Unfortunately, and no matter how much we would will it, pain – while we are still in the process of healing – doesn’t simply go away.  Rather, it picks up a tempo change and sleeps for longer and longer periods of time. Every once in a while, depending on any multiplicity of things, usually new combinations a surprise every time, this pain wakes up and it wants to have a conversation.

Therein is it’s trickiness – the healing process itself is what tricks us. Because it goes dormant, because it slides away quietly and slowly, we can think we’ve seen it for the last time until we turn a corner and step right into it again.

Only in hindsight do we become aware that we are healed. URGH. This is as infuriating to me as it is to you. Shit.

Thinking back at what pushed my pen to write the short poem above, there is nothing. There have been no feelings one way or another for over two years regarding that wound, because it is fully healed. Beyond a shadow of any doubt, there will never be a moment when that particularly named pain will wake up and look for me.

About last Fall, I thought my healing was done. Today threw a surprise party to remind me that this is clearly not the case. I have been tending to my surprise heartache all day, and it has not been easy.

Two reminders, then: every single feeling is temporary, and there is goodness after the sorrow. Always always always.

Today, I am grateful for:
1. The distance between this bad day and the last. The ebb and flow had shifted enough that I believed I was in the clear; this, a sign that though I am not yet there, I remain headed in the right direction. inshAllah.
2. Baths. I took a tub. I had forgotten how calming they are when taken in the middle of the day.
3. Friends who remind me of the anger. When I can’t see it, it is their crystal clear vision on which I must rely. Thank you. Love you.

Paris | March 8, 2019

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