january is one of those months where you experience every feeling on the human spectrum and you just have to go about your day like that isn’t happening
My dad and I once had a disagreement over him using the adage “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
I said, “That’s just not true. Sometimes what doesn’t kill you leaves you brittle and injured or traumatized.”
He stopped and thought about that for a while. He came back later, and said, “It’s like wood glue.”
He pointed to my bookshelf, which he helped me salvage a while ago. He said, “Do you remember how I explained that, once we used the wood glue on them, the shelves would actually be stronger than they were before they broke?”
I did.
“But before we used the wood glue, those shelves were broken. They couldn’t hold up shit. If you had put books on them, they would have collapsed. And that wood glue had to set awhile. If we put anything on them too early, they would have collapsed just the same as if we’d never fixed them at all. You’ve got to give these things time to set.”
It sounded like a pretty good metaphor to me, but one thing I did pick up on was that whatever broke those shelves, that’s not the thing that made them stronger. That just broke them. It was being fixed that made them stronger. It was the glue.
So my dad and I agreed, what doesn’t kill you doesn’t actually make you stronger, but healing does. And if you feel like healing hasn’t made you stronger than you were before, you’re probably not done healing. You’ve got to give these things time to set.
i always mean it when i say i love you btw
‘but thats a stranger you dont know’ and i love them. i love that they exist and i love that they passed through my life. and i love u too btw
many problems are caused by the mindset that the world is divided into good people and bad people and the bad people can be “found out” and removed, eventually leading to a utopia containing only good people.
how do you just get up and deal with the fact that there’s a last time for everything. there was a last time you sat on your dads shoulders and there was a last time your mom tucked you into bed. there’s going to be a last time you kiss your sister on the head and there’s going to be a last time you hug your best friend. there’s going to be a last time you feel exactly as you feel right now and there’s going to be a last time that person says i love you. i need to lay down