The Way of Words

All my life I have been attracted to and repulsed by words. For their fallibility and ambiguity and their utter refusal to bow to absolutes. Like reeds in the wind they bend and sway with the minds they touch and once released from the pen… who knows where they’ll go or what they’ll become. Even my own don’t stay the same. Don’t stay what I told them to be. The message I gave them remains and yet never will whisper the same story to two different ears….

I go back over old stories or letters I have written and see parts of myself reflected that I’d forgotten all about, treacherously retained in the curves and scribbles of my own hand… preserved as a lasting memory of who I once was. That wasn’t what they were supposed to say. Not what they were supposed to talk about.

I look at what others have written to me and am reminded of things that got lost along the way. Of love that once was… of fascination that suddenly arose. Of dreams and hopes and beautiful thoughts. Of disappointment and anger that swept the good days away and made good things gray and dull until at last they’d faded from our minds. Yet the words remember. It’s all right there… even now, years later. It’s still here.

They are still there.

Making me laugh and cry and repeat this never-ending dance with myself all over again.

I don’t normally cross post between my blogs but in this case, I wanted to. Though this entry was originally written for 365 Reasons I feel it belongs here far more. It’s been on my mind and heart to say for a long time, and I am glad the words and I could find one another tonight to do so.