The Book of Hurt, Now Available at Your Local Library
Your life is made of many books - the Book of Hurt may be the most important.
There was that one time when it came so very fast. Eyes filled to the popper-most with the manic rush of dare, the teen spirit in your legs and bones and britches chafing at the thrill of it. With every corpuscle of your being and every nerve in your circuitry making a whee and a woohoo sound and throwing devil horns to the world. So fast, so very fast, with no care and no fear. Just you and the powerful idiocy of your blank slate being. Young blood pulsed through you—a storm swell on its way to steal an entire sandy beach.
And then?
The silent big blue of your unmoored body flew through the bored and sighing air. You, a rock in a universal tumbler built to slough the shine of confidence from an unwilling shell. The record shows you cartwheeling and Cirque du Soleil-ing your impressive bulk in acrobatic flail to a final and sudden standstill.
You did not stick the landing.
Skin torn and with the searing heat of pavement scorching at your exoskeleton, the rush of blood and 1,000 watts of “what!?” shot straight to your addled brain. And then—quiet. A groan to mark that pinprick of agony. Somewhere, in the distance of your awareness, your mind informed you that a bone did in fact snap its fingers in time.
“Am I dying?”
Not from this. This is an example of a bog-standard physical hurt. One that doesn’t kill you. One that leaves scars. You will point them out with fond remembrance to lovers and the curious alike. Are you dying?
Not today.
There was that other time—one of many—when you poured your heart and soul into the Thing. That magical Thing you made. The Big Thing, the Winning Thing, the Open Door Key to it All Thing that could set you on your way. You stuffed this Thing to the gills with honesty and heart and those secret parts of you, never before shared. Feeling brave at this moment, you peeled back and exposed your softness with unflinching boldness and watched as your Thing dropped into the world.
“Take your shot. Here I am!”
Nothing. It made a small plop as it fell into the global pool of everything all at once, its small shivering ripple quickly fading, barely capable of disturbing a water bug let alone rocking a boat.
There was no love for the Thing. No hate either. There was—to put it bluntly—no nothing. The sting of pointless toil crept from the basement of your spine and into your throat, forming an acidic bathtub of hurt and rejection. The unbearable weight of an empty nothingness strapped itself to your back, forcing a compression of the soul like no other.
“This must be what death feels like.”
No. The bile and the venom and the acid in your throat will toughen up your larynx and help you find your voice but it won’t kill you. This kind of hurt is necessary. It will leave scars that trigger the bile dispenser and you may want to hurl, but you will not die from it.
Not today.
Once. He or she or they or them. Remember that time? The feeling was so overpowering it made you nauseous and you tossed and turned in sleepless agony with the realization that you were willing to put this person’s needs above your own. That you would do anything for them, to them, and with them. You were jubilant and afraid but oh-so-ready to devote, devote, devote.
And then?
They chose someone else. This tsunami of hurt instantly devastated the village of you, smashing through houses and uprooting your most treasured trees and gardens. It leveled your town square in the blink of a sigh, leaving ugly debris strewn in your streets. And you, there, clothes shredded and wet, stumbling down back alleys with no shoes and broken glass everywhere.
Overstuffed suitcases of tears exploding in quiet rooms, unexpected, with so much volume, so much hurt. This person. How did they not love you back?
“I want to die.”
You may want to die, but that’s just the hurt talking. Hurt talking will have you walking through the world feeling like a zombie and dead inside because this was ‘the one’. No. This was just one. Feeling like you died is how you will know you are alive, but you will not die.
Not today.
Funny how that works.
There are pages filled and pages waiting to be filled in the Book of Hurt. These are the Big Sleep chapters and the older you get, the more will appear. These pages will make a hole in your whole. You will be swiss-cheesed at the end. One hole for he. Another for she. And him and her and they. This hurt is unique, which is why we will not focus on just one. All begin large and fade at the edges as years pass, but never quite leave. You will read these pages again and again and again, with ink smudging and heart thumping.
An imprint. A voice. Their fingermarks upon you.
These hurts produce memory scars that are warm to the touch, and as you run your finger fondly along the length of them, you will pray that they never, ever fade.
“What is death like?”
Time will only tell.
But not today.
The Book of Hurt is your most important book (although the Love one is pretty good too). You will be hurt consistently and in many different ways throughout the course of your life. And of all the books in your library, this one will regularly be your least favorite read.
But read it you must.
Because.
You need two things to make a good human—risk and time.
The experience gleaned from consistent application of risk—to risk it all in love, work, life, whatever—over the course of a lifetime will create your whole being. That’s you, human. The fully formed, make more mistakes, ever-evolving and hopefully good human.
The risk we take is to continually check out the hard-to-read books from our personal libraries. The ones that stir up the most emotion, whether it be pain or joy or sorrow or anger, or any of the accessible feelings held within their glossaries.
The instinct may be to ban or to burn the Book of Hurt in a fiery ceremony that saves you from having to read its painful words, but to burn your risk books is to burn oneself from the inside out.
Don’t ban them. Don’t burn them. Don’t attempt to re-write them years later, either.
Consume them as they are written.
By you.
For you.
To make you.
You.
Keep writing.
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen
This week’s amends…
“Parody is also a way of owning and containing what you were once in awe of.“
- Tony Hendra, from his memoir, Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul
On Rotation: “Death of a Ladies’ Man” by Leonard Cohen
So much to see in this 1986 tour of John Waters’ Baltimore apartment.
Via 13 Things I Found on the Internet Today
Tiny bird alien alert.
Via Kottke
Another good one. Thank you.
This landed right in the soft spot.