It is the size of these joys - molecular - as compared to the size of the sorrows - ponderous, lumbering behemoths - that skews perspective. A headcount reveals that the joys outnumber the sorrows a thousand to one, but that's no help when your electron microscope isn't handy and all you can see in front of you is the weary black hulk of a broken heart, matted, shaggy coat soaking up all that soap-bubble light until you can't even remember what it was to be clean.
My father wrote me a letter. It's not that we're not close, because we are, but it's more the occasional-text close rather than the extended-correspondence close, ya dig? And yes, texts count, for me, as being close, because it takes EFFORT to write one of those darn things, really wears on the thumbs, I find. Everyone in my generation, take note: the arthritis will strike you texting-fingers-foremost. You heard it here first.
In the middle of a letter of profound emotional intensity, heavy with love and care for his only daughter, dysfunctional though she may be, my father writes:
While the circumstances of our difficult times are uniquely our own, and our respective responses are determined by countless variables, we share many common elements. Not the least of those is jeans... at least that's what everyone says. I don't know why our mutual preference for blue, slim-fit, pre-washed should make a difference, but it does, I guess.
Read these sentences a couple of times, oh you who are probably a regular taker-in of this very blog, and you may recognize them as exactly the sort of thing, potentially word-for-word, that I might write, given the proper circumstance.
We love the way we have learned to. My mother taught me the value of emotion for its own sake - the headiness of being able to give another person your whole heart and revel in the giving, the challenge of simultaneously loving oneself and loving the rest of the world, the need to value everything, regardless of its difficulty or horror. I struggle still to internalize my mother's lessons. My brother does a far better job, which is, I suppose, why he and I are so closely bonded - I see in him the kind of love I hope someday to be able to give.
My father, on the other hand, taught me the words for love. The words are long, polysyllabic, colored with metaphor and analogy. Occasionally they're run-on sentences, though always properly punctuated. They are typed on a word processor and signed in a near-illegible slanted script. They are what comes out of your mouth when you allow yourself to take someone's hand, look them in the eye, and tell them how you feel. They fluctuate wildly between soaring proclamations of unconditional care and multilayered puns just to take the edge off. Why would you put this kind of effort into talking if you didn't feel like your conversational partner was worth every phoneme?
When you're talking love, words hurt to say sometimes, an utterly physical pain, a stab in the throat and gut, a full-body cramp. Letting them out can be like draining an abscess, pouring them forth until there's nothing left, and then sometimes the person to whom you spoke simply stares blankly, they were expecting something else, a hug? a kiss? a what? something that means more than words, you think, but there is no such thing. Not everyone speaks the language of words when it comes to love. This was a shocking realization for me, and one I am not sure I'll ever be able to come to terms with in its entirety. I can strive, though, and I will, because what is life without effort, what is speech without struggling to find the words?
Words are what I use because they are the truest thing I know - words, always words, nothing but words, I am so full of words I could give them to you forever and still have more for you, only for you, there are words I have never said that I am saving specifically to say to you.
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