It’s an interesting question I’ve asked myself. One in which I have no idea what the answer is. But its like the immovable object meeting the unstoppable object conundrum. My own stubborn bullheaded ways absolutely forbids me to try, and yet I find myself asking, wondering and flirting with the idea over and over again. Do the flames burn if I put my hand in the fire? Should I put my hand in the fire?
In the broken pieces of myself that lay all about my feet, I think to myself that they are better left where they are as I have little desire to try and put them together again. So the obvious answer is that of course fire burns. Yes, you’re going to be burned if you stick your hand in moron. Get real. How many times do you have to do this before you learn not to stick your hand in the fire?
But here I am, yet again, wondering, will something better grow from underneath this destroyed flesh like a new set of wings inside a cocoon of ash if I try again? But these positive thoughts of hope are always quickly dealt with: harshly and with vengeance, like a nuclear bomb that consumes with malice and rage and has no chance of letting any faith survive. And I blame them, and I blame myself and I blame the empty heavens above for the fires I start within myself, the fires that burn around me and the fires that others have started that have all left charred flesh in their wake.
But if these fires still burn my tender unhealed skin, then why does this desire still continue to haunt me? Why am I here writing this letter addressed to no one, with no intentions of it ever landing in someone’s hands? Is it possible that I’m trying to reach myself by exiting my own body and circling around the brick wall that I’ve built to hold me in? Or am I simply sending words into the darkness wondering if they will find light where I cannot see any?
If you haven’t figured it out by now, it’s a simple thought. In my own blindness, fear keeps me from reaching out what is tender and soft into what could be more flames. Sure, it’s easy to say that without getting burned we risk nothing. But words are cheap and often meaningless when soothing the very real pain of being scorched to blackened embers. But does healing begin with words? Words unspoken? Or words given to someone else? More questions I cannot answer.
So here I am, writing in vain, moving head first into the unmovable brick wall that I have built around myself, asking why. Why am I on this website, wanting to stick my hand into the fire, and writing things that are traditionally best left unsaid to others? They are good questions. And I don’t have any answers.