The texture of sorrow

23 March 2011 05:41 PM Categories: The struggle | Best of the blog | Writing prompts

Amethysts are the color and texture of sorrow, muted, raw crystal hiding in rock. I’m right there with them today, sorry, sad. I want to run my fingers over amethysts, close my eyes and feel their coolness, feel how an emotion can be made so tangible and beautiful, regret carved out of earth.

We shine them up, facet the edges, take the sorrow and make it into something else, muffle it. The transformation leaves me cold. It’s a burial, a way to take the depth of sorrow and buff it up, make it reflect light, refract it. I prefer my sorrow rough and real, my regret salty, dirty, unwashed.

It was only after my nap today (a nap after another night of four hours of sleep) that I felt real regret. I’ve been having a hard time with that, teasing out my confusion and emotions from acknowledging the pain I’ve caused. I feel regret. I don’t feel shame (I’ve read a lot about this, shame versus guilt, how shame in some cases is about getting caught, about worrying how others will perceive one's transgressions, while guilt is about not doing the right thing, is more internal, not that this is the whole of it). I make my decisions willingly for concrete reasons. I own them. But I do wish I had handled things differently, had been braver a long time ago.

There is a creek bed, a stream running over rocks, not enough water because of the drought, even after all the crazy March rain, but still the water rushes and plays. I’m at the side, I carry heavy amethysts, raw, stone mixed with stone. I walk to the water’s edge, let its coldness envelop my hands. It rushes over the amethysts, carries the confusion away. I am left with pure clean emotion. I throw the crystals one by one across the creek. I watch them arc through the air before the grasses on the other side swallow them up.

What am I to do? Do I let sorrow trump action? Do I let guilt keep me trapped? I have to acknowledge the pain, the complications, the fears in all of this, and then move forward. It’s the direction of movement that paralyzes me, the decisions that are clouded by mud, history, and the unknown.