Starlight asked a question "Why is the distance between my brain (which knows he's never coming back, and he still blames me for everything, and still refused to admit that he even lied to me about the calls in the first place) and my heart ( which still loves the person I married, not the person he is now) so far apart???? Why can't I just stop loving him??"

I’ve tried to answer this myself for a long time. The only way that I could understand my own willingness to get hurt over and over again by the woman I love was to think of my heart and mind as two separate beings with distinctly different goals. The argument between them is continual when it comes to loving my wife.

My heart is filled with love. Even when I hurt, I can still show love to my kids, to my wife. My heart makes me sentimental for all the good times in my life, it makes me forgive, to believe the best about people.

My heart is good.

It likes feeling good and making others feel good. Yeah, it hurts sometimes..."but darn it, mistakes happen, they didn't mean to hurt me, I forgive you...cause I love you so much." I believe my heart has an infinite capacity to give love and to believe in goodness.

My head is a coldly rational bastard. It does not care what my heart feels. It's purpose is to keep me alive and to keep me from getting hurt. I touch a flame once because my heart sees beauty and my head says..."fool...don't do that again...that hurt!" And sometimes my heart listens. Even though it WANTS to touch that pretty dancing light, my head won't allow it...because it's job is to keep me safe.

My brain...that coldly rational bastard, doesn't care about 'pretty' or 'love' or past or present or dreams of the future....it cares about preventing bad things from happening. Protection.

When I think of my wife, my heart sees this beautiful woman that I love. It sees all of the wonderful times we've had. It remembers the birth of our children, our first kiss, it remembers our passion; all of the good times in life I've had with her. It even remembers our first Dday and how it was love that pulled us through it. My heart forgets the bad stuff.

My head...the bastard...doesn't forget the bad stuff. It remembers wanting to die. It remembers the tears and the hurt...the constant pain. It remembers where the pain came from. It knows what caused us to hurt like that...and it works hard to prevent that hurt from happening again.

While my heart vaguely remembers the hurt....my mind will never forget it.

So they argue. About life. Sometimes, my heart wins. I decide to stay and keep trying to work things out; but then I get hurt again. My heart tries over and over again...until finally...my head just says no. No more. It will not let my heart lead me into any more pain with my wife. My heart finally understands that she has become a beautiful flame that will burn me.

My mind decided that I needed to move on. Rationally...I can't live being hurt like this anymore...so I pull away from her. My heart, hoping for the best wants to go back...again...the fool...but my mind knows what the outcome of going back would be-pain...and it won't let that happen to me.

I know it's kind of an odd, round-about way of looking at it...but it makes sense to me. I still want to love my wife like I used to...but I *know* that I will get hurt if I stay with her...and understanding that...makes it easier to finally pull away from the flame.

8 mile
March 22, 2003