What Is Owed

Dearest Le---,

When you found me again, I had made my way, haltingly, painfully, slowly, to a place of equilibrium, of balance, of peace. I had found ways to be at harmony with the world around me. I had come to find joy, fulfillment, and hope in the very moments of the day. My damage, while not "healed" by any measure, had been accepted -- grown to scar tissue, instead of the persistent, acute, and immediate wounds which had so dominated virtually all of my past.

I accepted and addressed hardships as they came, without being provoked or maddened by the vagaries of circumstance. I did not dwell in hatred, in rage, in seething obsession over the wrongs done me.

This was the state of my being when you found your way back into my life. I don't know if you understood or believed it at the time, but when I looked at you, it was only with love. That old feud of hurt feelings added no weight to my heart, and I saw only the woman who was once my dearest friend -- a friend I have missed so very much. If you wondered why I was so contrite, why I seemed to have so fully let go of old grudges and injuries... this was the path you found me on, seeing nothing to gain from insisting that I be allowed to boil in my own hatred.

I owe you endless gratitude, a debt I can never repay. I cry echoing thanks to you from the innermost lost passages of my heart's labyrinth.

I thank you for helping me to escape from that frozen hell.

I thank you for reminding me that I am not a creature of equilibrium, balance, or peace.

I thank you for reminding me that love is, itself, the source of all injury, for what we do not love cannot harm us in more than the most superficial ways.

I thank you for the pain you gifted me, which shocked me awake and allowed me to spit the half-chewed lotus leaves from my mouth. The pain which reawakened my soul to the reality that if I am enlightened, that enlightenment does not find its center in the temple of harmony, but instead the shrieking tabernacle of chaos. I am not eloi, not bodhisattva, not tzadikim, nor would I ever aspire to be. I am morlock, anantarikama, kallikantzaros. Not angel, but goblin.

The pain, reasonless and selfish, which you rained down upon my unsuspecting peace was the only panacea for the drowsy prison into which I had interred myself.

Also so, with that in mind, I hope you understand the intention when I say that I hope, sincerely, profoundly, from the deepest parts of me, that -- where ever you are, whatever you are doing -- I hope that you are in pain, just like me.

N