[2014.03.06] What doesn't kill you does not make you stronger.

"When somethng gets hurt, it heals back stronger than before. So why be afraid to take that chance?"

When something gets hurt.

I'll tell you a little something.

When a body part gets hurt, when it breaks, when it fractures, it tries to heal itself. It's intentions are pure and simple: to fix the problem back to normal. That's it. However, our bodies fail in it's mission, because although it is healed, there's a scar, a mark. You know that. you know that if you cut too deep, a hairline shadow permenantly appears where the wound once was.

But I want to talk about the scar that is left behind.

It's evident it's not the same as it once was. But listen here: it does not come back stronger. It comes back dysfunctional and becomes a liability.

My grade 8 gym teacher once told me abou tan illness his mother had, in which she would randomly acquire tiny little cuts in her lungs, cause unknown. Of course, these cuts would heal themselves. However, she had to get a operation on her lungs. Why? Because although the tissue grew back, it was thicker. It was harder. It was less stretchy. Her lungs could not expand to their maximum size, it couldn't expand a sufficient amount to get enough oxygen in her lungs.

That's the thing about the human body. You break something, you break it for good.

So you see here why I am scared to break my heart. Why I am so hesitant to take this risk: because I kNOW it won't come back the same, like I had first had it once before.

I feel like for every time I take a risk on a person, it's like I'm placing my head back on the guillatine. Except, unlike the swift chop of a proper guillatine, I feel like the pull of gravity cannot pull the falliable blade hard enough to cut me off clean. I feel like it just slams down on my neck, cutting centimeter by centimeter. Slicing deeper and deeper.

First slice: my carotid artery.

There goes everything that's left in me. Now I'm left empty, unable to contain the essential things I need to continue on. I can't. I just can't. But I'll try at it again. And so,

Second slice: trachea.

I can't breathe anymore, I keep gasping for breath after breath, but I can't get enough, I can't bring enough air into my lungs to oxygenate the already failing cardiovascular system. I can't breath. But I try again anyway, because everyone is worth the risk, which leads to

Third slice: spinal vertebrae.

I can't do it anymore. I can't get up. I can't move. I can't control my body, it's limp and lifeless, and it's sucked out of any piece of a soul that was once there. I can't function. I'm useless now. I am only capable of thought, and my thoughts hate me for disconnecting me from my body, reducing me to this nothingness.

And now I feel like I am holding on just barely, just with a few tissues of skin and muscle. I feel like, all I need to lose my head is just once more slice, one more risk, then I'm gone. I will have lost it. I will have lost my head, my sanity, my will. And I don't want to take another risk because I don't want to have to endure that last slice. I don't want to go out there and see my head being pulled apart from my body, seeing my head being severed strand by muscular strand, detaching itself. I don't want to have to put myself in that position where I can see this is happening, but I don't care because I am too blinded by lust.

I've seen people who have completely lost it. They grow old, and they aren't mentally as well as they once were. They're in the mental ward, the mental unit of the long term care facility. And yet, they still remember to come out at the exact moment his wife is walking to his room in order to greet her, to kiss her, to walk with her. I see old couples who just sit there. Just sit there. They don't have to say a word. But you can tell they are elated and there is no where else they'd rather be. They've got dementia and Alzheimer's, but they still remember the one they love. After forty years, after sixty years, after all those years of marriage. They still lean in close and tell their wives in wheelchairs that they love them, repeating it as many times as they need to, because she's old and she can't hear. They still tease each other and laugh together and take the time to give them small little gifts.

I just.

Maybe the reason to live is in fact to find a loved one. Maybe love is real. Maybe love is what keeps us going. Maybe there is such thing as another half of you out there. Maybe love is the whole purpose of our survival.

This frustrates me, because I hate this idea. I hate it because it hurts so fricken much, but if taking a risk means I have the slightest sliver of a chance of meeting the one who will still love me when I can't remember them, then maybe it is worth it. If I could have that, if I could grow old and have no one else but tht one single person, then I would do anything I could possibly do, suffer as much as I need to, just to have that.