How is it that I can be so good at feeling hurt but not helping others who hurt? I should know how to use the right tone of voice, give hugs, offer food in the least, but instead all I can lend is a pitiful "I'm so sorry". The worst part is that this "sorry" changes nothing; it just kind of lingers in nothingness. And I'm not talking about a mistake of a week long relationship or being fired from a job because eventually we can get that feeling back from someone or something else. I'm talking about the morbid, unspoken, 'be wary' topics. The events that make us feel like time is spinning on a different clock; that this moment cannot be reality because if that's so, than there's nothing better but for the minute hand to just stop. As dismal as that last sentence sounded, don't worry, I hope my clock runs for a long time. My whole point is that when something horrible happens to a friend, we can impart our soulful proverbs but what it comes down to is that there are some things that really "are" out of our control.
I've always believed that while fate plays its course, I have a bit of power to influence the happenings in other's future, moreover, in my own life. I walk the line of determinism willing me on one side and my own free resolution hoping to change the inevitable. But eventually we all have to face a point in our lives when something drastic will happen and when it does we can never go back to the way it was. I know that when my mom had breast cancer I acted completely normal. I didn't tell any of my friends and only waited until they found out by noticing my mom's wig looked a lot better than her actual hair... or lack thereof. I found no solace in opening up to friends because what could they really do? Ironically, I feel like I have no experience in these matters when suddenly the tables are turned and I am the one with a friend in need. But the only thing they are in 'need' of is for this inexplicable event to erase itself; something that no one can possibly give to them.
Time suddenly feels like poisonous quicksilver with no antidote. I guess it has always acted as a force that slows down or speeds up depending upon the events in our lives. But when in a single moment it pulses in overdrive it feels more like an impending doom than an opportunity for atonement. In a way it's not death that kills us; death can physically attack our bodies or force us to close our eyes to the world in a nights' sleep, but this wouldn't be so bad if we felt like we had accomplished everything in time.
"The only conceivable solution would be for the past never to have happened. If he didn't come back... She longed to have someone else's past, to be someone else, like hearty Fiona with her unstained life stretching ahead, and her affectionate, sprawling family, whose dogs and cats had Latin names, whose home was a famous venue for artistic Chelsea people. All Fiona had to do was live her life, follow the road ahead and discover what was to happen. To Briony, it appeared that her life was going to be lived in one room, without a door."
- Ian McEwan (Atonement)
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