Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

I'm off on a search to rescue my Princess. She has been snatched by a horrible and evil monster.

This happened because I made a mistake...

Not just one. I made many mistakes during the time I spent together, all those years ago. Memories of our relationship have become muddled, replaced wholesale, but one remains clear: my Princess turning sharply away, her braid lashing at me with contempt.

I know she tried to be forgiving, but who can just shrug away a guilty lie, a stab in the back? Such a mistake will change a relationship irreversibly, even if we have learned from the mistake and would never repeat it. My Princess's eyes grew narrower. She became more distant.

Our world, with its rules of causality, has trained us to be miserly with forgiveness. By forgiving too readily, we can be badly hurt. But if we've learned from a mistake and become better for it, shouldn't we be rewarded for the learning, rather than punished for the mistake?

What if our world worked differently? Suppose we could tell her: "I didn't mean what I just said," and she would say: "It's okay, I understand." and she would not turn away, and life would really proceed as though we had never said that thing? We could remove the damage but still be wiser for the experience.

The Princess and I lounged in the castle garden, laughing together, giving names to the colorful birds. Our mistakes are hidden from each other, tucked away between the folds of time, safe...

All those years ago, I had left the Princess behind. I had kissed her on the neck, picked up my travel bag, and walked out the door. I regret this, to a degree. Now I'm journeying to find her again, to show I know how sad it was, but also to tell her how it was good.

For a long time, I thought we had been cultivating the perfect relationship. I had been fiercely protective, reversing all my mistakes so they would not touch her. Likewise, keeping a tight rein on her own mistakes, she always pleased me.

But to be fully couched within the comfort of a friend is a mode of existence with sever implications. To please me perfectly, she must understand me perfectly. Thus I cannot defy her expectations or escape her reach. Her benevolence has circumscribed me, and my life's achievements will not reach beyond the map she has drawn...

I needed to be non-manipulable. I needed a hope of transcendence. I needed, sometimes, to be immune from my Princess's caring touch.

Off in the distance, I saw a castle where the flags flutter even when the wind has expired, and the bread in the kitchen is always warm. A little bit of magic...

Visiting my parent's home for a holiday meal, I felt as though I had regressed to those years when I lived under their protection, oppressed by their insistence on upholding strange values which, to me, were meaningless. Back then, bickering would erupt over small accidents.

Escaping, I walked in the cool air through lonely streets after moving out my parents' home. As I distanced myself from that troubling house, I felt the embarrassment of childhood fading into the past. But now I stepped into all the insecurities I felt by myself, all the panic of walking in a shrouded cloud.

I only felt relieved after the whole experience was over, sitting back home in the present, steeped in contrast: I saw how I improved so much from those years...

This improvement, day by day, takes me ever-closer to finding my Princess...

I felt on my trip that every place stirs up an emotion, and every emotion invokes a memory: a time and a location. So couldn't I find the Princess now, tonight, just by wandering from place to place and noticing how I feel? A trail of feelings, of awe and inspiration, should lead me to that castle: in the future: her arms enclosing me, her scent filling me with excitement, creating a moment so strong I can remember it in the past...

Immediately, I walked out of my door, the next morning, toward whatever the new day held. I felt something like optimism...

.....to be continued.