The Secret Wound

!Hola! Everybody…
Today, another repost...

[Note: though none of the following is true, it tells the truth]

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-=[ The Secret Wound]=-

When I got up this morning and pondered today’s blog, this title hit me. I really don’t know why. The only “wound” I’ve been thinking about lately is the pungent cleft nestled between your creamy thighs.

But really: What wound? What secret?

Initially, I didn’t have a clue. So with a palette of mixed browns and umbers, I offer you the following sketches hastily brushed against the backdrop of my consciousness…

After some random word association and knocking about, I have come to the conclusion (awareness?) the wound is loneliness.

What is loneliness, you ask? I am speaking of the regular, run-of-the-mill variety – the kind we all encounter. The kind that, no matter how firmly wrapped we are in our lover’s embrace, manages to slither in for a brief stay every once in while.

Anyone ID with that? Or am I alone here in my perception of loneliness?

If I were to be honest, there’s not much to say about loneliness, for it’s not a broad subject. Shite, even a child, alone in her room, can travel the complete range of loneliness, from border to border, in less time than it takes you to travel to work.

But though it may not be broad, our subject is deep. Loneliness, dearest, is a river deeper than the ocean. But even here there’s no mystery. The same precocious child could fall quickly to the very bottom without even trying. And since the depths of loneliness cannot sustain human life, the child will swim to the surface, perhaps none the worse for wear.

Some of us, however, insist on bringing breathing aids with us for longer stays: sex, more sex, imaginary friends, drugs and alcohol, soul-corroding relationships, mind-numbing entertainment, virtuality, inflexible routines, and pets (pets, along with sex, in my opinion, are some of the best enablers of loneliness). With the help of these aids, a deprived soul can survive the airless profundity of loneliness long enough to experience its worst horror – its duration.

A very young friend breathlessly described to me the other day, the idea of habituation. “Did you know, Eddie,” she asked, in that artless way only the young (or very honest) can affect, “that when presented with the same odor for only a duration of several minutes, the olfactory nerves become habituated to it and cease transmitting its signal to the brain?” In other words, she explained, even shite doesn’t stink after a while.

Likewise, most pain loses its edge over time. They say that time heals all wounds. Even the loss of a loved one, perhaps life’s most wrenching pain, blunts with the passage of time. It recedes to the background where it can be shelved along with lesser pains. Not so with our constant friend loneliness, which only grows more keen with and unrelenting. Loneliness cuts just as sharp as it did an hour ago – a week ago.

But if loneliness is the wound then what’s the secret, you ask? I submit that the most painful death of all is suffocation by loneliness. And it is from the perspective that I tell you that loneliness itself is the secret. It’s a secret you cannot tell anyone.

Why?

Because to confess your loneliness is akin to confessing your failure as a human being. To confess would only cause others to pity and avoid you, afraid that what you have is contagious. The irony is our condition is caused by a lack of human connection, and yet to admit to it only drives away your possible rescuers farther away (and in the process attracting pets and sexual predators ).

So, you attempt to hide your loneliness in public, to behave as if you have too many friends already, and in that way you hope to attract people who will unwittingly save you.

But it never really works that way, does it?

Dearest, your condition is written all over your face, in the droop of your shoulders, in your echoing silences and the hollowness of your laugh. Most of all it shows when you settle for a meaningless, endless stream of fuck partners, none of whom you will surrender to true intimacy, and you fool no one.

Believe me in this -- for in a forgotten corner of my past are all the tried tricks of a once lonely man.

Love,

Eddie