Love is the Trip, Pain is the Compass by James Diaz

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​I once thought that every warp I had came from my mother. That somehow the emotional clay of me wasn't equally cut into by my father. My father, who was always on the verge of standing up for himself, of seeing it through, some days, of leaving. And how he would crumble into himself, into his music and his own private world. Dissociated islands. Oh. That's how I learned about soul marooning. That was how I lived my life for a very long time. And some days still, when the thought of full escape, full bloom, full stepping into, feels too long a journey to make.

But I've come a long way. And I both do and do not know how. That's the rhythm of healing, I suppose. My father, always trapped, almost two feet out the door. Wasn't my mother trapped, too? By her own body, the warp, for her, was physical. Twisted at the spine, bent like a felled tree still clinging to it's sturdier half, my father? Why not. I get it. It broke me, and it didn't, and I get it. If not for them, no me. No nothing. Life isn't nothing. It wasn't all nothing.

My father knew how to fight when it mattered. My mother's mind was a tower of spirit. And her heart, no matter how dark it could get, and oh, it could get dark, was the thing that taught me sound, was the thing that made me, me.

Forgiveness is acceptance. You don't truly forgive, if we ever even truly do, until you understand what made a person who they are. You read their story. It's your story too. It's the greatest story ever told. It hurts like hell each time you tell it. It's also terribly beautiful. This. All of this. Everything that happened. It didn't have to happen, but it happened.

The warp is also love. I, like they, was made outside of something beyond my control. It's a long story. We've no choice but to tell it. No choice, maybe, but to forgive. We're all Jakob, at the foot of that ladder. Acceptance is the angel. Love is the trip. And all that pain, it comes in handy sometimes. It's a compass I open.
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