What’s Thicker Than Blood?

I hide behind beautiful words. I hide truths that are more difficult to wrangle with than even I know, and though I like to think I’m facing things, I know there will be more, more and more things, stacked like cordwood, like bodies, just waiting for me to face them, that is, to put faces on them.

I will be the object of disappointment, confusion, for adding a friend on Facebook today. There, doesn’t that sound junior high? Doesn’t it sound so…what is the generation called these days? I’m an X. What comes twenty years later than that?

I lack the courage to give detail to the drama. I fear offending, defending myself, abandonment at its heart.

Here are the truths I know:

Families are a confusion to me. They lack a sense of immediate connection, whether by my nature or my upbringing, I have yet to figure out. And yet, and yet…who knows me? Maybe only someone who’s witnessed it, or pieces of it at least. Someone who can pick apart the betrayals, the hurts and the charade to get at the things that make up the whole me.

And also, we will be dust. This I know, and so why not make amends, why not get the explanations I need, why not tell how it hurts?

I’m not good at this thing, and sometimes I’m grateful for the shortness of it, the fleetingness of human life.

Other times, I wish for forever, to learn all there is that makes up a heart.

Tags: family, loss, love