A Mighty Big Thing

Happy Birthday, Zora Neale Hurston! 

Two of her quotes spoke to me today, after a difficult night of wrestling with old sadness I don't understand and a growing bitterness in my heart that I am ashamed to admit is even there. 

This: 

Bitterness is the coward's revenge on the world for having been hurt.

And this: 

A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.

I don't understand the hurt I carry around. For the last many months, it bubbles up as the hurt of betrayal. "Trust me, believe me. Here, take my hand. Ha ha! Just kidding! I didn't mean it. Who did you think you were?" 

What follows is rage, or its more corrosive form, bitterness. It's Stephen King's Carrie, covered in pig's blood. It's Charles Dickens' Miss Havisham, who stopped life at the precise moment of her betrayal: clocks, clothes, cake and all. 

It's my ex-friend, whose clock actually did stop when her mother died, leaving her with no one. I don't doubt she rages at me still.

It's the man I recently dated, who insisted I didn't love him, that I would leave him, that I would betray him. There's as much dust on the potpourri that some woman left in his bathroom years ago as there is on Miss Havisham's wedding cake.

And sometimes, not always, but enough to be a burden, it's me.

I am embarrassed that time and distance do not shrink the hurt. I'm confused, because it's not how I see myself. I feel despair, because I know that this cowardice is a defect of character, and I have tried praying it away, with no success. I don't work a twelve-step program, but I'm well aware of the steps, at least in writing. In particular, I tried focusing on steps six and seven:

Step 6:  “Were entirely ready to have God remove our all these defects of character.”
Step 7:  “Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.”

When I needed my shortcomings to be gone, and they weren't, I wailed with defeat. My wise friend Tracey Segarra (who actually has worked all the steps!) assured me, "Progress, not perfection, is the goal." Insisting on feeling one way and not another is just another way of insisting on my way. Of course I feel despair when the big HP doesn't do what I want it to do. It's not doing it my way!

So here is what I'm going to do when bitterness grabs my ankle from under my bed at night. First, I'm naming it, something pretty because it hates being hated: Lucille. (Wasn't her twin Lucifer rejected? I've heard he's still bitter.)  Second, recognize that because time and distance haven't changed it, well it's mighty big, whatever it is. 

And I think the big thing I'm supposed to do? Take that girl's hand.