#oneburnttoast

[crustysideup]

Can things ever just remain the same?

I think of a time, about 7 or 8 years ago, when I just took it for granted that life would stand still and steady. I suppose once you find a happy space, you want to delude yourself into believing that it will never go away or evolve into something new (aka: something strange). So much so that your mind cannot fathom a situation in the future where things aren't the way they already are. Does that even make sense?

I think of the person I used to be - throwing myself into new relationships, unafraid to try new things, or taking a few reasonable risks. But now, the more awareness I've earned, the bigger the coward I seem to be.

Emotions hit too hard. And even though I find I've more or less gotten a hold over the rest of my emotions - one still has the potential to burn me down to ashes. For me, heartbreak gets harder and harder to manage. It's like having that one difficult child that sparkles with intelligence and twinkles with innocent mischief. The child with a mind so curious, it sharpens their character with time, yet somehow remains soft and vulnerable to even the slightest ripple in the fabric of their peaceful surroundings. This is the child that throws the most passionate of tantrums, as passionately as they would warm you on a cold, lonely day. Some days you love them to pieces and some days you wish you didn't know them because losing them would be just too much.

I learned recently that the universe has these supervoids, tearing into the glittering universe and swallowing up stars as they keep expanding. How the inside is filled with dead cold emptiness. It makes Earth seem so warm and lovable, even with so much destruction and wickedness to go around.

I've been wondering a lot this year: which pain is greater?

The dark, cold emptiness of losing something warm and familiar in a world full of selfish strangers?

Or the white hot load of regret - for not having lived and loved when you had the chance?

(picture taken in 2020, I think)

[crustysideup]

For someone who once grew up while growing apart from her family, visiting home is always intimidating. Even though time has softened some of the sharper edges and dulled the rust on old words, there’s still that quiet fear — that one wrong note could start another quarrel.

Your childhood brain stays on high alert, scanning for danger in every silence. The uneasy pauses, the sudden rise in voices at the dinner table, the quiet contempt for one another’s flaws, the knowledge of not being the perfect daughter or father or mother, lays like a frosty, translucent veil over our heads - damp and cold - your skin remembers them all. It’s a sixth sense you never asked for, and one that still trembles when home stops feeling safe.

But we live anyway — for the small moments in between, in an attempt to rebuild those fragile sand castles with happy moments, even if our spades are rusty and our buckets have holes in them. For the laughter that slips through the cracks, the teasing that feels like love, the shared meals that make everything right for a while.

For the quiet assurance that, despite the imperfect stitching of our bond, my parents still will the best for me — and the tender sorrow of knowing that countless others were denied even that imperfect grace, or were given it only to lose it.

And so I take a few deep breaths, and get on that plane. 🌺