i ain’t missin’ you at all…

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do you ever find yourself just viscerally missing something?

wishing it was there and knowing that there was no way on earth that it could be there? that it wasn’t really ever there in the first place? that nothing you could do would render it there?

it doesn’t matter what it is… a lost love, a lost dog, a lost life, job, friend, cat, wife, object, thought… it doesn’t matter.

something that was never yours but for a while there you could pretend.

these things hurt in the same places in yourself that the flinch memories hurt. you know, those things that you did that you really wish you hadn’t. i could list examples but they would hurt everyone they touched whether i was thinking of that person or not.

suffice to say that these are memories that even dulled by distance? cut you just a little. the ones that make you flinch even in retrospect. yeah, the flinch memories. you’re welcome to share yours and i’m willing to share a couple of mine if y’all ask but no one needs to.

they make us flinch. that’s really all that we need to know.

but some things acquire that same power without all the intervening trauma. well okay they have trauma but it isn’t as sharp. it isn’t as easy as remembering a single incident.

instead these are things that just hurt you. the things that maybe you can’t understand, that you can’t quite reconcile no matter how many times you prod at them.

less like a stab wound and more like being beaten with bats through a phone book… the trauma is deeper but harder to see…

the scabs that won’t heal if you will. just places in your memory that you don’t let go of easily and that you try never to visit.

the ones where you shake your head or you sigh.

okay so there’s a place inside of us right? that feels things that it doesn’t put into words very well… that place that understands with a stab that brings tears to the eyes… the one that wells up at long distance commercials because of the losses they imply.

sometimes, things get under our skin or into our hearts and even while we know that we shouldn’t or that we aren’t being wise we let it happen anyway… and sometimes, remembering those times is enough to run the tears down your cheeks. [well i’m projecting since i don’t know how to cry]

and you might think i’m talking about men or jobs or family but ask kathi about itty bitty and she’ll tell you that she hurts inside for her too. i’m not talking about anything specific at all.

although i will admit that something specific motivated this post.

i miss something. i miss it viscerally and i miss it all the time… and i can’t ever have it … no, not ever.

and it hurts in the same place as a bunch of really shitty things that happened to me hurt. that place where i sort of recognize that i haven’t really dealt with it but that i shove everything anyway.

the junk drawer of my brain if you will. (although i call it the black hole)

except that lately mine has popped open and been spewing things at me…

unexpected things, things from the distant past and the near past and even a couple from the future. yes you can mourn losses in the future, i’m mourning my life as a single mom right now… and ever so slightly the life i didn’t get to live with my ex husband… but that’s old and well mourned that one.

i have very few regrets about the life that i’m living and the choices that i’ve made. were i given my life to live over again i would act differently because i *know* how to deal with bullies now… but would i change a lot of my fundamental choices?

no.

i really wouldn’t, those choices have turned me into the person that i am now, warts and all i like who i’m becoming. would i erase those flinch memories?

maybe one or two… the ones that didn’t really make any appreciable difference to my growth or that one… that one that still just stabs perfectly when i think of it… the one that stole my innocent exploration of the sexual universe [no, i wasn’t raped]… i might change that.

but i might not too… and because we aren’t given to live our lives again i can’t ever know if i would make that decision differently a second time.

but the missing. that visceral feeling of being punched in the solar plexus?

i don’t think there’s any way you can change that part. i think you’re stuck with it. i don’t think you ever get that feeling unless you opened yourself up to something and took a chance.

that act of faith where you leap and hope that the net appears below you, and it often does. of course, just as often?

yeah not so much and you go splat on the hard concrete floor.

i don’t even mind that i’m missing what i’m missing, i’m okay with it and all. it does speak to a significantly higher level of boredom than i had realised though which implies that i need to do some work on what i do with my time.

or that it was summer and i wasn’t working enough.

i just wonder why it has to hurt so much. why some things just don’t feel better with time. sure they get less sharp or they get smaller or the flinch isn’t as big but they’re still there living inside of you.

and i don’t mean the bullshit from school, that fades by the wayside one day when you aren’t looking and then it’s gone forever. it’s not the same as what happens to you when you’re an adult and you’re the one guiding the ship you’re sailing on.

then you’re responsible and you hold on to things for a lot longer.

good for lessons, not so good for healing.

missing sucks.