Holding On To Hurt

If they cannot yet forget the pain they have caused each other, they are not obliged to remember its vividness, stirring up the hurt to fuel their anger.  Things are remembered, acknowledged, and can be allowed to fade even if they will never entirely disappear.  To recall them, to avert the prospect of forgetting, is a different process, one which empowers the hatred, forcing it to the center of the stage where it no longer belongs.  He says, "Don't think I have forgotten."  She says, "Don't you think I ever will."  Perhaps anger is all they feel able to share.  Maybe they think it is all they ever really had, and as they fan the flame time is going by.  It is time contaminated by the hurt, the recrimination and so whatever years remain are now mortgaged to the pain they feel and that they think must be inflicted.  The only saving grace may be the inability to make this rage a legacy, to pass it on as do some nations and peoples who feel the curse must be treasured and enshrined, given to the trust of children in danger, they feel, of loving instead.