mahiwaga

It finally occurred to me (or I just remembered) who I’m writing this for. Me.

Mostly because it amuses me, but also because it is comforting to look back these long, lonely years and realize that a lot of what matters hasn’t changed. And with regards to the few things I’ve been meaning to work on, I’ve actually progressed somewhat. I haven’t crossed any grand milestones, to be sure, but there is a narrative trend. It’s not all stagnation and decay in my soul. There is still a part of my soul that flows freely, even if it is more of a slow trickle than a raging torrent. (Why is it that I’ve become fixated on the idea that the soul is a liquid substance?)

I slept uneasily last night, half-dreaming/half-ruminating about things in the past that are irrevocable, immutable. On one hand, I want to figure out how to make it stop coming back to the present and continuing to damage my soul. I keep longing for things that cannot be. I keep getting wounded by actions whose echoes have long died away. On the other hand, I worry that if I seal the past off permanently, then I just won’t feel anything.

You know that life has not been the kindest to you when you have to contemplate what would be worse: to keep hurting, or to be completely numb.

And the reason why numbness scares me so much is because I think about people who suffer from leprosy, or more commonly, people who have uncontrolled diabetes. What happens is that because they can’t feel anything in their toes, they end up damaging them, bashing and cutting them up on accident, all without realizing it, and it gets all infected, and it never heals. And then you have to amputate. And I think that’s what happens if you let your soul go numb, too. You end up in all sorts of situations that end up scarring you, wounding you in ways you don’t realize, until you find putrescence where your soul used to be, and just exactly how do you amputate a soul?

And, to be frank, I’ve done the numbness thing, and it hasn’t really gotten me anywhere.

Which, I suppose, makes the choice clear. Better to go through life feeling things, even if most of what you feel is pain and suffering.

I’m still hoping for that flash of light, that fleeting moment of joy that’ll make it all worth it. I’m crossing my fingers.

At this moment, I’m right where I want to be.

But this, too, shall pass.