You know how when a cut or a wound, once it starts healing, gives us this strong urge to scratch it ? Even when there’s a plaster, the urge persists.
We cannot stop ourselves from scratching it and sometimes even making it worse.
The symmetry between the wounds that bleed and the ones that leave imaginary scares is profound. Time and again, we love to scratch them to re-live it. Re-live the pain.
And it doesn’t take more than a conversation to spring that thought back to life. It’s all etched in a corner and comes bouncing out from the vacuum that persists. The puzzle pieces are irreplaceable. Fitting a new one, no matter how perfect it is, is not possible.
We need to clean up the slate and create a new puzzle. Difficult ? Yes! But much better to start a new puzzle than assume trying to find the perfect piece to replace is better. It is not. We may think that only the missing piece has to be replaced but the entire board has changed. The puzzle isn’t the same anymore. The lost piece, (Yes, stop terming it missing, it is lost), took a lot of other pieces along with it.
Whether it was for good or not, is just not the right question. Is this question even help, is he question.
Let’s build new puzzles. Shall we ?