cats and relationships

Cat gnawing on pig guts. Gross be!

This is the Циганска печка. Notice the little kitty feet underneath. Kitty came out to peek at me as I took a couple of pics of him.

I sit here with a pile of tests in my lap that I keep praying will get magically graded. Or burst into flames or something. There are awful. Thank God, I am only grading them. I didn't create the test!

So, I'll write rather than grade. I've been thinking about avoidance lately. Some people say that time heals all wounds. I don't believe that. Some wounds, if left alone, become infected. You can ignore your wound for a long time. I suppose you can cut off the part of you that is wounded, and eventually the pain ceases. I hear that when a person has a limb amputated, they still experience phantom pains. You can be tricked by your nervous system to feel pain for something that doesn't even exist.

Do you have any of those relationships that just aren't there? Or perhaps a wounded relationship that you keep ignoring, hoping that it will heal? I have this one relationship... I've gone through bits where I thought everything was better. I wasn't angry anymore, that wounded part of me had been healed. Then I faced the relationship in reality and understood that I had simply ignored those wounds and put them away in places where they couldn't be felt. I go through this cycle over and over. Now I realize that I don't know HOW to heal relationships. I'd rather just not fuss with them. I've taught myself that a wounded relationship, if abandoned, will cease to hurt.

I have two rebuttals against this logic. First, on my sister's blog, she wrote, "relationships are never finished, they are just abandoned." hm... Second, at one point over the summer, I heard a song on a person's phone that brought up a well of memories. I had a bit of a panic attack. I was completely incapable of conversation. I walked in the dark to the internet club to send a deeply felt email, and walked home in the rain, in a daze. I realized that night that I mourned a relationship that I'd never had. I realized that time does not heal all wounds. Hard work, commitment, and choosing to love even when it hurts is what heals wounded relationships.

However, there is always the option of abandoning the relationship. Some relationships are not meant for life, others are. The relationship I mourned this summer is something that I must work on. Other wounded relationships, I don't know about. Like I said, I don't know how to heal relationships.