Once the conversation is started on a big (HUGE), issue that runs deep and wide, has stretched through your heart and mind and soul for years, and become a part of your very existence, you wonder when it will ever be closed. If it involves someone close to you, someone that is always going to be a part of your life, and always has been, or has for most of it, it’s even more of a question – when are all the questions answered? What questions can we ask? How does this end?
Sometimes, it never ends. Sometimes, just when you think it’s beginning, it’s ending. The hardest part though is knowing what you’re trying to get at. Is it the why that you’re still wondering about and wanting to resolve? Or is it the how now, the what now? For some of us, we need to know the why – we need to know why people acted or act the way they do, why things happened the way they did – why did we have to go through that? Others just want to put the past aside and deal with how it’s being addressed now and in the future.
But is there a middle ground? This weekend, it was an agreement between me and someone else (sorry – discretion is key here) that all questions are fair game, but we can each choose which ones we want to answer – so put on your boxing gloves, we said; half joking, half not.
When you’ve got baggage, issues that make up the very person that you are, and you want to figure it out, it’s a big maze of ifs, whens, whys, and hows. Because you don’t know where the exit is, and there are no directions, there are wrong turns along the way, and dead ends. But sometimes, like in Alice in Wonderland, there are friends and helpful allies along the way as well, keeping you on track, giving you clues, reminding you to be true to yourself. And at the end, whenever it ends, you can tell your story of a dream that was so real that it frightened you out of the slumber you’ve been in — and then you can really start living.
Jenna Sauber 