Bad Habits: A Love Story

I just picked up and finished reading Cristy Road's book "Bad Habits" after a long hiatus. I'm not sure why I read half of it then set it down, but I have struggled with reading an entire book for the last year. I'm not sure if it's literary ADD or I'm just super busy. I definitely know that it's not because I'm uninterested in what I'm reading. Cristy's illustrations are stunning and this book, that reads more like a journal, caught my attention from the beginning because it really allowed me to connect to it.

When I picked the book back up this morning, I noticed that I had dogeared a couple pages a few months ago. Much to my surprise, the two passages I highlighted were on theme with what I've been thinking about a lot lately: the duality of pain and love, and the idea that we should constantly be working on and repairing ourselves.

Consider the following passages:
"How do you fix an engine? In order to, of course, break it again, and be a bit better at fixing it the second time around..." (42)
As human beings, we are a constant project. Every time I think I am done making myself, I realize that I have done something wrong and I have to break myself in order to mend my own reparations! And I love this about life. I think that if I wasn't a work in progress, I would get bored and when I get bored, I get boring! I definitely don't want that.

"I could repair my brain as much as possible, but at the same time I had to accept the things I couldn't fix." (42)
It's important that in all my efforts to darn my life, that I remember not every blunder is fixable. I can't be shiny and new. It's never going to happen because with experience comes scratches and dents. As long as I clean up the dents that are a risk to my operation, then the mark that is left behind should be celebrated because it is an experience I have learned from and it is part of the story of who I am at the moment.

"This move, however, entailed a new, deeper understanding of the vicious romance between love and pain. Because without pain, I couldn't appreciate love, and without love, my soul wilted into rubble." (211)
And while I'm repairing my life and appreciating the things I cannot fix, I remember why I enjoy living and growing at all. These mistakes, blunders, whatever you want to call them, hurt. There are many times where I have had to learn to accept them when I wish that they would have just gone away. The brevity in which I discussed these reparations makes them seem easy to overcome, but they are not. Evolving as a person is a process that can cause much grief and sorrow, but unfortunately it is necessary. As I have repeatedly blogged about lately, that pain is vital to appreciate the love that flows in after it subsides. And, Cristy said it more beautifully than I ever could, "...Without love, my soul [will wilt] into rubble."
lovemaura