why is it

that I keep tripping on the same things over and over again?

(Because you're still trying to learn, sweetie [remember to talk to myself as gently and kindly as I do to the small people in my life]. You're doing great, keep going. Yay for internal cheerleaders! That's how we overwrite the old tapes...)

She hung up on me and didn't apologize. And now, since some time has gone past, she seems to think (if in fact she thinks at at all) that she's off the hook. It's as if it never happened.

There was a saying once which I can't remember exactly so I'll paraphrase: Some relationships are like a piece of paper where each person has a hole punch. After a while there are so many holes in the paper that there's nothing left to fix, nothing to repair. It's been destroyed beyond all recognition.

It's like the lightbulb (of realization) keeps coming on over and over again - I have these same epiphanies, over and over, and yet, I keep forgetting them.

So then a while later I trip over the forgotten hurdle, painfully rapping my shins, reminding myself that the old tape loop is still running in the back of my brain, or maybe even in the front. Heck, for all I know it runs the entire show.

But I keep trying to overwrite the old stuff, kind of like an old cassette tape that's been recorded over too many times, and the ghosts of previous recordings leak through, distorting the current message.

Is it possible to start over again? Like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Actually, that didn't work out so well in the movie, either, if I recollect correctly.

But we do the best we can.