nostalgia

The CD in Mom's Vibe has songs that were on the CD Court gave me when we were together. I don't think about her anymore, at least not in a nostalgic (nor a bitter) sense. So it's weird that these songs--perhaps triggering dormant synapses in my brain--dredge up all those old and dusty, all those antique, feelings. And I listen to the CD and let the emotions overwhelm me and when the next song comes on, everything is back to normal. I wonder why it is that we human beings are such paradoxical creatures: on the one hand, we hate suffering. If we didn't loathe it, it wouldn't be suffering. And yet instead of trying to distance ourselves from emotional hell, instead we plunge into it again and again; not accidentally but purposefully. And I don't think this is some sort of therapeutic technique, an effort to confront the feelings so as to do away with them. I think it's more along the lines of self-flagellation: for some reason or another, we like to hurt. We flip through the old photographs and we turn on the old songs and we close our eyes and let the pain return, even if it is but an echo of the pain or a memory of the pain rather than the pain itself. And maybe we do this because hurting is better than feeling nothing. Numbness is far less desirable than any emotional hell. All I know is that when I listen to those songs the only thing I want is cigarettes and bourbon; but because I'm cheap, I'll have to settle for beer: