I am filled with the desire to unknow today.
Oh, Paris, sweet, beautiful, stylish, confident Paris. How I wish I could unknow that you have seen such horror. And that you could unknow it too.
Also: an eight-year-old killed a one-year-old last week. And has been charged with murder. I wish I could unknow that we are a society that would even consider such a charge against a child that young. And in one where any one-year-old could ever die that terribly. I want to live in a world where our better angels always win and where such pain doesn’t exist.
Trump called Operation Wetback, one of the most shameful chapters in American history, a good thing at this most recent Republican debate (debate number 37, I believe). No one batted an eye. I wish I could unknow that I live in a country where one of its political parties and millions of its people come from a place of such hatred.
A plane flew into a building in Ohio. Every time I hear about stuff like that, or about the Russian airliner probably brought down by a bomb, it makes getting on a plane and leaving my kids that much harder. I wish I could live in a world where every plane stayed aloft and every boat afloat.
And there’s another one, more personal, too personal to share. But just know there’s one more thing I’m struggling mightily to unknow – devastating, gutting, final, ugly, unfeeling. I pray every day to forget it forever, like none of it ever happened, from the very start all those years ago, up until the day when my feelings didn’t matter in the least, when I was just collateral damage, that last day. And every day since then. It hurts to take a full breathe. My skin aches everywhere you touched it, like I might crack and shatter at the thought of my blind foolishness and misguided trust, at the realization that there is no apology coming, or even a check to see if I’m okay, to see how I coped with pain so searing.
I wish I could unknow you and every heartbreaking thing you’ve ever done to me, every humiliation you’ve put me through. If you had been purposely trying to destroy me, you could not have done a better job. There are days that I feel I will never recover. Like today.
