Residual Emotion ...

For the past several months, I've been in recovery, emotional recovery.

There are days – though they now come further apart than they used to – when I am reminded that I am not yet healed.

Actually, I wonder if I ever will be, fully.

If you sustain a wound, one day it becomes a scar. Cells regenerate. Life goes on. But the scar remains. Do those cells regenerate? Why doesn't the scar eventually disappear? Is it because those cells are different than the cells that were there before? What makes them different?

If our lives are the sums of our experiences, do we ever really shed anything that's occurred? I don't think so. I think hurts become less potent over time, but once we've experienced that energy in our lives, it's transformed us.

If we carry those we love in our hearts, don't we also carry those we've lost?

And if we still love them, are they really gone?

I was just watching Martian Child and John Cusack, whose character's name is David – I mean, of course it is, right? – says, "When you love somebody, it's really hard when you can't see them anymore."

My friend Charles died nearly five years ago and sometimes I still get a little weepy when I think of him. Most of the time now, I smile – laugh, even – when I remember him. He was one of a kind. But every so often, out of the blue, a thought about him will come into my mind and I find myself crying. Five years hasn't entirely mellowed all of the pain. There are still twinges.

So I guess it's no wonder that I'm still recovering from something as fresh as a few months ago. My brain tries to trick me into reverting to what feels familiar, but then I stop and remind myself that a lapse – or would that be a relapse? – would be a setback, that I'd just have to recover that lost ground all over again. And as long as I've traversed that time and space once already, why put myself through it again?

But sometimes, it's extraordinarily difficult to be strong. Strong is hard. Right is hard. Weak and wrong are easy. Easy but not viable, not really.

A couple of weeks ago at the gym, as I struggled with a move, I asked Brandon, "Will it ever get easier?"

"Nope," he said. "When it starts to get easier, we'll add more weight."

It's the struggle that makes us stronger.