“It hurts to set you free/But you'll never follow me/The end of laughter and soft lies/The end of nights we tried to die”
"The End" – The Doors
Have you ever cut yourself real good? Got a loose tooth or some sort of cut inside your mouth? Hurts like hell when you first get it, and if you’re anything like me you probably spend a few minutes immediately following the injury cursing like a sailor.
But then the pain subsides and typically, in a few hours, you forget about whatever it was. A few days goes by and you still haven’t thought about it until you see the scab. You’re intrigued. It doesn’t hurt anymore but it sure looks like it should and then you reach out and touch it and a shock of pain sprints up your spine.
After a moment or two, once your nerves settle back down, you can’t help yourself, you touch it again or you use your tongue to push the sore tooth. And again the pain jolts through you – not as bad this time but it’s there all the same.
Why?
Life is full of clichés about letting sleeping dogs lie and not rocking the boat and what have you. Dogs need awakening, boats should be rocked. We all know this, we just pop off with the conventional wisdom when we’ve nothing left to say to someone in desperate straits or showing more courage than we can muster at the moment.
And there we are staring down at that scab, picking at it at first until the need overwhelms us and we rip it off in a glorious moment of pain.
But not all scabs are visible. Not all hurts are on the outside or some place where we can get to them – they’re not all tangible.
No, some are buried deep inside. Just thinking about it, a broken heart seems like some wonderfully messed up idea some overly imaginative writer came up with to sell books. That is until you’ve had a broken heart. Until someone you adored ripped the life force from your chest and smiled as you fell to the ground.
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