The Change

My friend lied to me, about me, in front of me. I can't say it changed anything - much will go as it has for years. There is a genuine affection, and even love remains. But I question history, now, as it has been written. I question sequence, I question cause, and I definitely question effect. Seeing clearly is a light and effortless thing, it is true. The pain still has weight, and cannot be dodged.

Even as I choose to let the sleeping dog lie, I know it is both strength and weakness. I call it weakness because it seems enormous effort to uncover and right the wrong - for no gain in the end that I can imagine. So is it weak, or is it kind? Can it matter given the distance from this time, from this life?

I believe it matters only to me, within me, as a lense to my dreams. Which ones will I fight for - and at what cost? How can I know if any choice is the right one, the one least selfish? What arbiter can there be who can know enough but be blind to prejudicial conclusion, who can see enough to weigh in safely but not so close as to be myopic?

I've kept to my word. Will that change when death grows even closer? Is desperation born of mortality, or is it a shaking of the chains, a weightlessness that knows no risk? How will I honor all the promises and still be able to promise anything to myself?

When did my perspective shift from thinking my best year was 30 years behind me, when I see it now clearly ahead? All the words I hoarded then - the words that dried up in a seeming instant...they come slowly back, in small bursts and struggle now for reclamation. How I envied that Harvard boy, madly obsessive but oh so in command of perfect words. I wish I remembered his name, could find his book, and swim again in the tales he wove.

My own words return, and I will use them lightly. Use them often, learning again to tell the stories I carry. There's no such thing as closure. But there is opening, there is opportunity, there is hope.