the house that is me

Dear Ajé:

It seems I had another episode of temporary amnesia. That whole nasty cycle of forgetting who I am from time to time. Though I’m starting to remember that I only forget who I am when I start trying to find myself. Someone was kind enough to remind me that the brokenness inside doesn’t mend. We cannot fix things that no longer exist, and the past is gone. When I feel lost and can’t find my way it’s because I’m searching for a ghost. Not a ghost of what could have been or should’ve been, just a ghost. All the glue in the universe couldn’t piece together a fabrication of my imagination. A dream. An idea. This doesn’t mean that the past needs to be forgotten, it just shouldn’t be mourned obsessively. Nostalgia is good, but not if its an addiction. Not if it makes you hollow.

Take a house for instance. If you’re building a house and you bend a nail or break a board, either you say ‘damn it’ grab a new nail/board and just keep on building, or you have to do a little bit of first aid to take care of the splinter, scrape or throbbing finger. This event doesn’t stop you in your tracks and devastate the process of development. It’s just a thing that happened and that’s all. Sometimes the story attached to it is too dull to even mention, other times you have a scar to remind you of that damned nail. But the house gets built none the less because you’re not spending your life trying to fix a broken nail or a fucking 2x4.

I suppose one of the other mistakes I make is thinking that my life is a blueprint for something greater. I must remember that the blueprint was something I created a long, long time ago. The planning phase is over and I am in the process of building. During this process I have smashed my thumbs, boards have fallen on me, I have shot nail guns through windows, I have been buried beneath mountains of flooring, and have been challenged with many bad weather days. But despite these mishaps and storms my house has remained standing. I’ve had to rebuild a wall or too, but my foundation has remained in tact. I can try and deny this fact all I want, but my mere existence is proof of the solidity of my core.

I guess what I’m trying to say is SNAP OUT OF IT. You know you’re okay. You’ve always been okay and you always will be. When a nail gets bent remember that it’s just a nail. A necessary part of your structure, but not a big part of it. Stop worrying about the nails that were bent when construction first started. That was years ago. Those nails are all dusty or disintegrated. You’ve mourned them and have moved forward, it’s okay to let go.

Love,
Yourself