Self Blame

I’m beginning to think that what is most attractive about blaming oneself for the things which happen in one’s life, or taking responsibility for them, is that when you say, “If I had done something differently, the result would have been different,” what you’re effectively saying is that you are in control of your life in some way, that it’s your own choices which have led you to where you are. In many ways, it’s much easier to do that than it is to say, “What happened was not a result of my own choices,” because that is a statement which automatically implies that you had no control over what happened. And not being in control can be truly frightening.

Link: Rape Recovery Journal

“January 26th 2000 Oh these flashbacks are killing me. My heart is hurting so badly. IF this is HEALING, I dont want to do it anymore!”
http://www.angelfire.com/ok3/AmysAnger/Journal.html

Forgiveness

There's a post on Mad Melancholic Feminista about forgiveness and (sibling) relationships. It made me think about forgiveness in my own life.
It's an issue I've been grappling with for a while now -- it simply doesn't come easily to me. The way I see it, forgiveness is, by and large, a tool I use to be able to justify the existence or creation of a context which either does actually exist or which I want to have exist.
There are times when I don't even have the slightest desire to forgive. Usually, when that happens, it's simply because I’m afraid that forgiving might involve forgetting, and that forgetting might involve allowing an encore which is not something I would like to have to deal with no matter now many ‘mights’ would have to find their way into reality before that happened.
There are other times when I think that it is beyond me to be able to forgive primarily because anger or pain get in the way although my ability to set those feelings aside seems to depend on who the other person involved is — like most people, I suppose, I can forgive almost anything in those I love.
Although, then again, there are those whom my inability to forgive has ultimately caused me to stop caring for. What seems strange is that I don't have to care about a person to somehow find a way to forgive them. What I need to be able to forgive is to want to be able to see that person playing a part in my life, however small, at some point in the future. And if I want to be able to see that in my mind's eye, I am willing to ignore reality.

Broken Violins

I just came across an article about David Garrett accidentally crushing his 236-year-old million-dollar Guadagnini violin and felt really sad.
I don’t play the violin although many years ago, my grandmother had given me an old Czech copy of a Stradivarius. It first came to me in good condition. After years of my being separated from it, it came back to me with its body cracked. I doubt the violin was ever worth very much but I was heartbroken nonetheless.

Link: http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2257124,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

Words

Playing with words. Feelings. Sequences. Cold. Heat. Shorn. Warmth: glimpsed, untouched, locked. Bare. Bereft. Frigid. Untouchable in the end.