Between pages

Life is strange like that. The long journey in which many things are forgotten. Then a half-turn and suddenly it's just as if you walked back in time. Like picking up a book you haven't read in years and finding a faded picture inside you'd forgotten was there. Or a pressed daisy, crumbled leaf and all.

This is my crumbled leaf and all.

"Sometimes it is possible to feel such grief that you think you cannot go on. And yet know you must. It is possible to see what's coming and then tell yourself I am prepared, I am prepared, I am....
Sometimes it is possible to build walls around yourself and think it is strong, it is strong, it is.
Sometimes it is possible to deal with a secret sorrow by reminding yourself that I've had practice, I've known worse, I've known worse.
And yet....how easy it is for the voices of your heart to drown out all the things your head is saying.
While trying not to think of the one thing you should be telling yourself...I have been a fool. Such a fool."

Someone once said that to be taken for granted is the highest form of compliment. That what it really means is that you have become such an integral part of their lives that they cannot imagine one without you, they expect you are always around, just like one expects the sun to rise at the start of each day and darkness at the end of each one.

What this really means, among other things, is that people tend to get accustomed to anything. What a good thing it is, and how convenient, that our hearts get used to things. People and places, love and loss, joy and sadness.

I stare at my handwriting, heavily smudged and sloppy, my turbulent feelings apparent even without the words. I try to remember when this was written. And why.

I know what it means, can even guess at the circumstances. But when I try searching for the particulars, I find I draw a blank. I'm more unsettled by this than by the finding of the note. For it means something. Of that I'm sure. But what?

Am I stronger? Or merely reconciled?
Is this self-delusion? Or was it wising up?
Are these walls? Or am I free?

The answers however, whatever they might be, will never change what someone once said. That our hearts will get used to things....

Such a very good thing.