A nerve ending doesn't die until you choose for it to die. It can suffer, sure. Be pulled and bent out of shape, pinched between an uncomfortable situation and an impossible choice. But a nerve ending doesn't die until you choose to let it die. It makes sense to let various nerve endings die, all throughout your life you're faced with disappointment. Embarrassment. Anger. Dampening a nerve feels like the responsible thing to do, to make it so you're less reactive in a world that's a simmering vat of chemicals trying to dissolve and ignite you all at once. But it doesn't Die, until you choose to let it die. You ask for something, you reach out, you take a risk and it doesn't pan out for this that or the other thing. Yeah, that's fine, robust minds will refute a pattern of one and try again. But once it becomes a pattern, once the trend has established itself and the establishment is poor then such similarly robust minds will want to protect themselves. Don't reach out, don't take a risk, don't give it a chance to hurt. Living is giving it a chance to hurt. So many parts of relationships and stagnation of self and relationships are simply refuting a chance for it to hurt. When every shred of logic and evolution are begging you to choose protection to Live is to refute them. This doesn't mean make poor decisions, keep running back into pain headlong until you're black and blue. It means have a standard, have an acceptable standard of pain. Mark it every year, every month even. How much pain can I achieve today. Give life every chance to throw you to the street so every now and again you land better off than you started. Relationships stagnate when you refuse to try anymore. When your brain and thresholds together refute to keep this routine of pain, that is when a relationship dies. And you can choose for it not to. You can choose, in little ways, every day, to not let it die. To be that one stubborn asshole who invites a friend out for tea every sunday evening even though they've never taken up on it in the decade you've known them. You can choose to live, a hundred times a day in a hundred different moments you choose to live. Be aware, choose to live.
