GRIEF-LETTING
We were at church celebrating Halloween, in a circle of other kids with a bunch of candy piled in front of us. And on the count of three, for some reason, the adults decided to let us all rush forward in a mad dash for it. But just before the countdown, we looked across the circle and locked eyes with this other kid and we knew that he was gonna fuck us up— but the adult counted down from three, and on Go! we still went, and he elbowed the shit out of us and we got a bloody nose.
There was another moment, too, when we were running at recess and knew we were gonna fall and scrape our knees, we felt it. It was beyond words, like how you just know things in dreams. And we fell, of course— but it wasn’t on purpose— we just lost control of our legs, and they brought us down with them.
These are the only times in my life I have felt true forgiveness.
The other night, I cried to you on the phone because, ultimately, I was upset that I have to keep choosing to be a better person. It’s just so hard to be kind to myself; it’s just so much easier to hate myself, I sobbed. I don’t think that you would have ever put it like that, but you did relate it to having an unhealthy nostalgia for the past, wishing you were a kid again even though you were objectively less free, which I think is an apt comparison.
After the first incident, the adults made everybody line up and give that poor bloody girl a piece of their candy, vainly attempting to replicate justice (in a scenario that wouldn't have existed without them). The kid’s parents made him shuffle up to her and mutter his apology, a half-hearted sorry more motivated by punishment than anything else. But the two of us locked eyes once more, and for the briefest moment, a flash of forgiveness: we are participating in something that we don’t have any control over— and this time, I got to be the perpetrator, and you got to be the victim.
I believe that children instinctively align themselves with that which is as opposed to that which ought to be. After all, children have no idea how things ought to be; they just got here. Adults, on the other hand, not only believe in things like probability (the ultimate ought to be); they assign logic and morality to them, derive from them countless shoulds, unnecessarily personal causalities that, if we're honest, do little but get in the way. Knowing the consequences of the present moment didn’t change a damn thing for me when I was younger; it had virtually no effect on my behavior because my behavior embodied the blamelessness of everything.
Whatever was the difference, really, between that which is and that which ought to be? Between giving pain and receiving it? Between guilt and innocence? What room is there for blame in a world where time is the only thing separating me from all that there is to know? What was there to know? Well, I knew that the boy would hurt me. I knew that I was going to fall. I knew that I secretly liked the attention of everyone ogling at my reddening napkin, lining up to pay me their sticky-sweet dues.
When that little girl fell, she bloodied up her knees quite a bit— and it hurt as much as it normally does when one batters herself on the pavement, I’m sure— but the girl felt no real urge to cry. In fact, quite the contrary: I recall, for some reason unknown to my adult sensibilities, it actually somehow felt pleasant; it felt good to see the fall through. At any rate, she thought her own blood looked kind of cool streaming down her legs. And she secretly liked the way that her flesh pulsed against her two oversized Band-Aids— another brief flash of forgiveness, this time between her self and her body: we are participating in something that we don’t have any control over— and this time, you got to be the perpetrator, and I got to be the victim.
More and more, forgiveness sounds like another dumb word adults made up because we can’t remember what it was like to just change and be changed. More and more, forgiveness sounds like an all too familiar story about adults attempting (and failing) to hide out in abstraction, avoiding the great responsibility of Blamelessness at their own expenses— and I’ll admit, I certainly understand the appeal.
Usually, when I call you crying about choosing to be a better person, sobs inevitably give way to laughter as I finally realize how silly it is to hold onto something, someone who made me so miserable, how silly it is to hate my self for hating myself. The exact moment during which my sobs transmute into this rapture, I believe, is the closest thing I will ever have in my adult life to experiencing that younger flavor of forgiveness. If we can't go back to a time when we didn't know better, I suppose the next best thing is to acknowledge the ritual of Consequence in passing:
We are participating in something that we don’t have any control over— and this time, we get to be the perpetrator, and we get to be the victim.