I Swear, This Time, I Mean It.

While listening to Motion City Soundtrack this afternoon I wondered about the complications involved in the metaphor, ‘every aching wound will cauterize and bruise’. I’d always figured that maybe they were onto something, that maybe time really did heal all wounds… But to what extent can any wound ever really be healed?

Even if the wound stops perpetually aching and, eventually, cauterizes what happens if we pick at the scab that’s left behind? Or push down upon the bruise? What if, somehow, we re-open the wound after it appears to be sealed?

This weekend I accidentally re-opened a wound I’d sewn up, bandaged and put to bed a long time ago. Well, it was actually my mother who first pulled the stitches out.. but instead of sewing them back into place I picked at the frayed ends, and watched my wound bleed and throb all over again.

It all started innocently enough. She’d received a work-call from his mum, who’s first name she’d forgotten to pick up. But she knew instantly who she was. He’d insisted our parents meet each other one night… one of those things I’d thought adorable at the time. It was when I, too, struggled to remember her name that the picking began.

I wracked my brain of all the times he’d mentioned her, trying to remember that name. And when I couldn’t? I done the unthinkable. I opened the msn chat logs, back from when we were happy, to find it.

I never did find a mention of her name, or remember what it was.
All I found was months worth of heartbreakingly beautiful compliments and the proof that I’d never cared for anyone the way I’d cared for him. And every time he called me beautiful, every time he’d said he missed me, every time we planned a weekend at his place… the wound pulsed, and throbbed, and threatened to pull me under all over again.

Tonight I deleted the msn chat logs and tucked my memories away in the corner of my mind I don’t visit often. I re-bandaged my wound, and vowed to never again pick at the stitches he left behind… Because life’s difficult enough without the constant reminder of the person I used to be, and the person I will never be again.

xx