In the Blood

by Lisa Unger

Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can break your heart.

Just because horrible things have happened to you doesn’t mean you can’t have a happy, normal life,

There was an essential difference between us. She was very loudly and fearlessly herself. She held back nothing—not her political or religious views, not her laughter or her tears, not her sneezes or farts. She was a hurricane of emotions, ideas, brazen sexuality.

As parents, we must accept that our children are who they are. We can’t make them into something we want, or be disappointed in them because they don’t meet our artificial expectations. At least that’s what my shrink tells me.

As I rode toward the “haunted” cemetery, my thoughts turned to my mother and how I don’t believe in ghosts. Because if anyone was able to haunt another human being, my mother would have haunted me. She never would have left me to live this life alone, even with the things I’ve done. I know that about her. She would have done anything, even in the afterlife, to protect me.

I think we draw people into our lives. It’s as though we broadcast our deepest needs, and certain people hear the signal somewhere in their own subconscious and heed the call. For better or worse, we attract our teachers, our allies, and sometimes even our nightmares. Some of us have louder signals. Some of us have more sensitive receptors.

He’d stay away from me now. They always do, you know, when you really hurt them. The bullies always stay away then; they’re cowards at heart.

There was a little bit of OCD, a little bit of my being too intellectually smart while emotionally underdeveloped.

We’re all crazy in our own special way. Some of us just have it worse than others.

Why is God so unfair in His distribution of gifts? Why does He give so much beauty and love and wealth and ease to some? Why does He ask others of us to toil, to struggle, to grieve?

This is something that has always bothered me. How could He create the monarch butterfly, and the pit viper?

What does it mean to forgive someone? It only means that you release the anger, the hatred. It doesn’t mean that you’re saying it’s all right now, or that you’ve forgotten the wrong. It just means that you’ve drained the boil. When you touch it, it doesn’t hurt as much. That’s all.