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I wept a little. Sometimes I do. I’m not embarrassed by tears. At times like this, tears exorcise emotions that would otherwise haunt me and, by their haunting, embitter me.
“True enough. If I were you, I’d have gone crazy years ago.” “I’ve considered it,” I admitted.
From time to time, I do consider that I might be mad. Like any self-respecting lunatic, however, I am always quick to dismiss any doubts about my sanity.
“Best thing that can happen to a man is a good woman.”
Keep busy, Granny Sugars used to say, even if with poker, fighting, and fast cars, because idleness will get you in worse trouble.
Struggling to recover my composure, I said, “Some days are so difficult that if we didn’t let wine steal our wits, how would we sleep?”
Most people desperately desire to believe that they are part of a great mystery, that Creation is a work of grace and glory, not merely the result of random forces colliding. Yet each time that they are given but one reason to doubt, a worm in the apple of the heart makes them turn away from a thousand proofs of the miraculous, whereupon they have a drunkard’s thirst for cynicism, and they feed upon despair as a starving man upon a loaf of bread.
A cynic once said that the most identifying trait of humanity is our ability to be inhumane to one another.
Recognizing the structure of your psychology doesn’t mean that you can easily rebuild it. The Chamber of Unreasonable Guilt is part of my mental architecture, and I doubt that I will ever be able to renovate that particular room in this strange castle that is me.
Life, Stormy says, is not about how fast you run or even with what degree of grace. It’s about perseverance, about staying on your feet and slogging forward no matter what.
If properly presented, a single rose can express a suitor’s feelings more clearly than a bouquet.”
Guilt and shame have, until now, kept me silent on this issue. I am old enough, even if just twenty, to know that I have no logical reason to feel either guilt or shame, that I was the victim, not the victimizer. Yet I’ve been so long marinated in both emotions that they will forever flavor me.
We are not strangers to ourselves; we only try to be.
We may lack riches, but the greatest fortune is what lies in our hearts.
