Captain's Log

10.04.08: Still Pretty Chilly

So, contemplating as I type. Been a while...

At times in life, there exists a pain that hurts more to numb than to dwell on. Certain people take this an emphatic step further, creating some sense of martyrdom that I personally find eye-twitchingly frustrating at best, but is that need to hold on really only driven by guilt or subconscious masochism? I sort of hope not, at least. Perhaps the feeling is the closest a few will come to experiencing a ghost; some lingering existence of another.

It's like substituting the memory of a fading photograph instead of your lover's arms, but what if it's the only choice? No such words I've learned can do the complicated sentiment justice, but it's distantly similar to being thrust from a cozy fireplace out into the winter slush, gray and black with exhaust, just cold enough so that your hands sting but never go numb. It's survivable, but you really start to miss that sensation of warmth, and company tends to run short in those chilled hearts. Pretty soon any warmer territory starts to look good, you know, but then there's that choice of numbing or dwelling.

Is it a sense of loyalty crying to remain true to a fond past? Does settling for a match over a blaze cheapen what was? Hell if I'm not going for the gold on the one thing I care about so deeply, but love and misery share a sense of uniqueness that comes from an infinite store, changing with every moment. The blunt truth is that you cannot, to any success, replace what has been lost. No one deserves to be a replacement, either. Or a distraction, for that matter, and I'm well aware I've committed enough of that crime to be beyond redemption... But people are certainly complex enough to find new paths to our emotions if we can deal with the scenery change.

Even then, I truly doubt that these attachments to our pasts will break, but it's hard to find a point to life when you wake up and spend each day buried in bygones. There's not a lot to chuckle about in my present right now, truth be told I feel pretty worthless for a few reasons not mine to tell, and can't even say I'm on a path so much as an endless meadow, but if I don't walk on then why the hell should I bother taking another breath? Even if I had some sort of map, I'd probably throw it to the wind in either spite or romanticism, anyway.

Haha, this seems about right, going on for a page just to reach a "perhaps" conclusion. Maybe S.O. is finally coming back. :p

Dare to reach out your hand into the darkness to pull another hand into the light.

Norman Rice

All ramblings of Erica Feggestad 2000-2008