A Cruel Mistress

Or else, as everyone else calls it, time. But this is not the age old rant about getting older and suddenly seeing everything start to shift and change (I shall save that for another day), this is more about the things that we all must go through to get to the places that we stand at today. I am talking about the experiences that brand themselves upon us, change us irrevocably, and have us emerge ever different from where we started. Perhaps some of these experiences have been kind to us - perhaps some have even been down right pleasant; but from where I stand, it seems that those I know as well as myself have walked through fires of hell to come out the other side. And sometimes, it does not feel like there truly is an "other side".

A cruel mistress I call her because she denies solace, torments with pinpoint accuracy - knowing how to humiliate and cause pain the likes of which few draw pleasure. There is nothing exquisite in remembrances - instead, this mistress draws her thousand tailed whip of memory and brings to life the emotions and thoughts buried just beneath the skin. Memory, to me, is nothing more than the tool to raise innumerable weeping welts, only to have them heal and be inflicted anew with some thought, some place, some ineffable key that opens the door and lets the mistress in to play.

And how memory has a way of playing with us. How can we trust what we remember when science tells us that there is nothing perfect about the wiring of the human brain? My memories haunt me in the form of a past I do not want, but cannot escape. There is nothing sordid about my life - no hidden bodies or crimes of conscience that I feel I must confess to. But my past, like that of so many around me, is full of loves lost, insecurities, lies, deceptions and countless decisions that prick - was it the right choice? How much differently would I choose if given the same dilemma today. And so memories creep upon me when they are not wanted, reminding me of a past that has gone before and invoking thoughts of all that is yet to come.