What is the Secret to Life?
Beats Me
I was just reading the headlines on my computer. I give CNN a few seconds, and then I give ABC a few seconds. Seconds, not minutes. It pains me, so I don’t stay very long. So much misbehaving. So much hate. So much, “Oh, no, you don’t!”
People just seem to do what they want to do, no matter what the consequences are.
I was a little girl when young women were burning their bras. It was the most incredible happening. I did not realize what was going on. I just know my parents said it was shameful. I was somehow ashamed. I was eight years old. I got the idea that girls and women should not act like that.
Yeah, that happened.
Those were the days when a woman had one thing to look forward to. She could get married. She would obviously have kids. If my family were an example, she would have five kids.
My father used to laugh at my mother, who could type 107 words a minute. Once he had retired and been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he used to laugh at the pittance she made working at the library. I think now she just needed to get away from him.
I still think of him as a cruel person, sadistic sometimes too. Once, he burned my forearm with a hot match. It was a joke. He asked me, “Want to see a match burn twice?” I was overjoyed that my father would take the time to share a joke with me. Jesus, that hurt. I was six years old. That was cruel. Of course, years later, I learned his mother had burned him with lit cigarettes.
What would the family think to know I am telling stories like this? They’d probably say it never happened.
So, what is the secret to life? When I first started writing this article, I thought it might be about being kind. Now, I’m not so sure. Now, it feels like surviving is the order of the day. Just wake up tomorrow. Put your feet on the floor the same way you did the day before. Take a big breath of air. Try not to cry. Push on. Push on.
Healing happens. Just let it happen. The wounds you carry got there for a reason. What that reason is, I don’t know. I know I can talk to dead people. I even have had cordial conversations with my father, who, after he died, I refused to talk to him for a long time. But I was undergoing a painful medical procedure and was terribly frightened. Also, as I said, it hurt. Just when I needed some help the most, he was there in Spirit. He helped me through it. We talked after that.
I don’t know what he would think of me remembering these terrible things about him. They are like scars that itch and sometimes hurt the many years after they were etched into the surface of my heart.
Being in this frame of mind, I remember other slights from other people. Hurts. Some scars. Misunderstanding. Me shutting down. Them asking me, “What’s wrong with you?” And me not being able to say.
I’m saying it now. There is no justice. But there is time. Maybe that is the secret to life. Time.