The violence of feelings

It’s like feeling through the dark.

Everything is vivid, but my eyes are closed. I am afraid of what I might see if I opened them. I stand in the dark, but I don’t turn away. I can smell the colours; I can hear the shapes.

I revisit old times, old feelings, as though searching for something. I read old letters, unsent and received, and pore over faded photographs. There is an answer, somewhere in the evidence of my past, but I can’t find it. I cry old tears, and afterwards feel exactly the same.

Those old wounds are not what I can feel before me in the dark. So why do I torture myself with them? Perhaps you must first move backwards in order to move forwards. Perhaps I am afraid of moving out into the world without context, without the sting of lessons learned still smarting on my cheeks.

So I let them go. The letters, the photographs, the text messages and emails – they fall from my hands like petals into a stream. I let them go and face into the dark with my eyes closed.

 

[I didn’t write it with my eyes closed, but the Boy With A Hat helped inspire this]