family

Family is a complicated thing. There is the one you're born in to, in which many of us may never feel completely at ease. Then there is the one we create either by marriage or by long friendship -- that one always seems the better fit. Both you love.

When families break there is a sound and a feeling: a long rumble of distant thunder, a static electric shock, a deep ache in your bones like you've been kicked. There is that move to make people you once loved deeply into enemies. It is forcible removal by violence, like having a tooth pulled with pliers and no novacaine.

I have been in right in the middle of a broken family more than once. The pain was so profound that I never thought about anyone else's but my own-- I simply kept my head down and plodded on until it didn't hurt anymore, which was a really long time. I didn't realize that it must have hurt the people who had to watch me go through it. In the last year I've had cause to be a witness to other breaks that are not mine. In truth I think I would rather be hurt myself than have to stand by while people I care about suffer. It is a misery I would give anything to be able to fix.

I'm reading "A Million Little Pieces" and coincidentally I saw James Frey on a re-run of Oprah last night while I was taking down our Christmas stuff. She asked him about having dental surgery with no pain killers and he said (and I paraphrase): "I would rather suffer physical pain than have my heart broken again, because physical pain is fleeting but emotional pain stays."

I think I get that.