Chapter Text
No one ever enters your life without a reason.
Some are gifts, others are lessons. (Unknown)
Just as there are gifts we cannot accept, there are also lessons we do not want to learn.
Not because we are not intellectually capable of doing so—quite the opposite. The hardest lessons aren’t the ones for the mind, but those for the heart.
Our mind cannot be fooled or deceived countless times, because it comprehends, remembers, revises, and learns.
The heart is a slow learner.
Words, events, people—they all leave their mark on it: scars that cut deep and bleed, clear, visible signs of what should be understood, yet the heart prefers to focus on healing them rather than learning from them.
Emotions are negligent teachers.
As a result, we can keep making the same mistakes over and over again, for example out of anger or sadness or fear, and above all out of love.
The heart hates having to learn the lessons that love teaches it, especially the bad ones, the painful ones, the permanent ones.
Those that not only leave scars but rip out pieces, preventing it from ever being whole again.
The mind processes errors, forming synapses to connect important areas and information in order to work more quickly and efficiently.
Muscles that are torn, overstretched, or worn out continue to send signals to the brain even after they have healed when used in a similar way, as a protective measure to prevent further injury.
Old injuries in bone or flesh can often hurt for years after they have healed because they have not forgotten how painfully they were inflicted and how long it took to repair what was destroyed.
Only the heart does not learn.
Inevitably, it seems to long for those who wound it, beats for those who punish it with disregard, and wishes to give itself to those who cast it aside.
And because the heart learns lessons only slowly and with difficulty, we sometimes cannot let go of people, even when we want to.
When we have to.
When we know it will not only cost us our hearts, but drag down everything we are to the deepest depths of an ocean we gave birth to from tears and darkness.
Some people are lessons we don’t want to learn.
That may work for a while and make it seem as though learning is just a formality—because circumstances have changed, the content has become simpler, or we just convince ourselves that we no longer depend on a positive outcome.
Most of the time, this is just an illusion, if not a lie, that cannot hold up.
Sooner or later, we are faced with a choice:
Either we learn our lesson, or it will keep consuming a part of us until there is nothing left.
Until we drown.