This Is Just a Bruise

This evening I did a terrible thing.  A terrible, terrible, terrible thing.  It wasn't anything cruel or unkind, and it was the right thing to do, but it will bring me nothing but pain.

We think that if we try hard enough we can get anything we want, or we think that if we can't get something it isn't really right for us, and if we know that we won't mind not getting it.  We think that if we like someone enough, in a pure enough way, they will surely see what we are and like us back.  We think that if we are smart enough, or clever enough, or funny or slender or pretty or delightful enough, we can make someone awake to good sense and desire us.  If we have done enough work on ourselves, and if we have had a long period of sorrow, and if we are optimists, we believe that this time, finally, surely, it will go our way.  But none of these things are true.  Trying hard does not mean succeeding; being wonderful does not mean being loved by those whom we love.  Wanting and deserving does not mean getting.

So now I have been wise, and saved myself a good deal of extended sorrow by choosing a good deal of immediate sorrow, and I have once more taken what I think is the right decision, to behave quietly and, I hope, well.  And no one but me will ever know that my favourite jumper is the one with the little pockets a person can put their hands in, or that there's a little place in the collarbone that's just the right size declivity for when I dance, or that the brown shirt is good, and the beige shirt is good, but the black shirt is best, or that deep red is the best colour, or that the singing along is lovely lovely lovely, or that the stories are always wonderful, or that the plays on words are the best, or that the dancing is like coming home.  And no one will ever care about those things the way I care.  And no one will ever care that I care, or give me the credit that I should get for that caring. Because no matter what ought to be, or what would be if there were any real justice, you cannot make someone want you.  You cannot:  I know that.

So I will wait, and this will go, as all things must go, and someday I expect I won't care very much that I was denied this chance, that I had to wait for happiness a bit longer, and that yet again I was not granted the opportunity to make someone else happy.

And that's okay.

And, yes, it's true:  dancing is touching someone. I was wrong about that, and unfair, and you were right.  I'm sorry.