the things that never go away.

There is a part of me this week, that has been reeling from the spaces that no longer hurt it. Spaces that we are all inclined to push past and pretend never exist. Spaces of grief and mourning that reflect the very worst of our hurt selves, that kept unchecked, bleed into the very present of our being. The feeling that while the bruises may heal, the scars will never truly go away. The joy that will always be bitter, no matter how sweet the balm, is perhaps a reflection towards my own indifference of late, to allow the old wounds to run its course, and manifest itself, like a letting of a required bleed.

I find that the things we so choose to constantly run away from, always somehow manage to catch themselves up with us in time. That we cannot truly escape the things we necessarily want to forget, and that in so much as we choose to grow, there will always be the things that will never truly go away. Perhaps naïvely, I have promised myself a list of spaces I would no longer make excuses for, but it is in grace perhaps, that I have learnt to cover the spaces where enough will have to remain. The over-learnt responses of a wounded heart, the hurt manifestations of a predesigned helplessness, a space no-one would perhaps willingly or openly admit. There is much guilt, shame and blame to go around, much of which I have spent years internalizing; of time spent away from the sun. A running towards and away from comfort, rest and nurture.

Comfort has always been a challenge, and I am constantly aware that it stems from a want in rest. A natural tendency to overstay my own welcome because I have grown tired of the constant challenge that comes in staying and finding courage within the art of discomfort and vulnerability. It is within the things that never go away, that I find myself recounting and recalling and experience or space that no longer is within my present. Like a bird who has forgotten to fly or a fish that constantly longs for the ocean; a what if that was, that I long to return to, but no longer know how to experience or endure, an empty waiting for the courage to claim what will be. I find myself nurturing the same quiet thoughts again.

As semi-colon to a long truncated phrase; a stop that begins within, at the edge of what could and will be, perhaps a promise to not return to but build upon the things that perhaps make up the very worst of who we are seems all but futile. Perhaps this is the mark of the things that never go away. A return to the same stories, revelations and moments of accountability. The same story told a million times, but perhaps if we work it right, lead to a hope in a somewhat different ending.