Lately, I’ve been thinking about the multiplicity of words’ meanings and intentions. If places can be haunted by the spirits and experiences of people who have come before, words are doubly, triply, so. Words and phrases are used and visited by more people than go to any one place. Each utterance brings with it the ghosts of its previous expressions, and some, by virtue of their versatility, and the amount of use are more haunted, or carry more meaning and emotion than others. Here are a few of the phrases I’ve been thinking about the most.
“I’m having trouble.”
An admission. Three words to open a conversation, to ask for help. To state a truth so complex and tied to different parts of your life that it would take hours to fully explain the given circumstances. A way to begin healing, to begin a slow journey upward. There is, perhaps, a loss of power when repeated as an excuse, as a crutch.
“I’m sorry.”
An overused and flimsy, yet important and necessary phrase. A phrase for all occasions, but truly fitting only a few. Sometimes all that’s needed and the right thing to say, sometimes a burden asking for forgiveness. It conveys healing and truth for the giver, but for the receiver a hollow phrase, sounds of nothing. And yet, it’s the portal to forgiveness, a way to move forward, an acknowledgment of faults and a promise to change. “I’m sorry” can be a way to express grief and sympathy and connect with another. It’s sadness for the situation, a nod to the twists of the world.
“I love you.”
Precious. Hopeful. Scary and wonderful and awful and thrilling to say. Sometimes a pale version of what it once was, but saying it an utterly important bridge of the past and the present. When the meaning changes, and it will, and that’s fine, that’s life, that’s what happens, the words might be a reminder, a little barb of memory, but they’ll also be a promise. We’ll still be friends, see?
Looking back at what I’ve written, I realize that trying to pin down the meaning of words is something of a quixotic endeavor. What I’ve written cannot possibly begin to get at the emotional resonances of these phrases. I can already see places and times where and when what I’ve written is entirely false. Even today my understanding of these words have changed and gained new weight and prominence. Right now, all I want to do is completely delete some sections because I see them and realize how colored they are by my emotions at the time I wrote them. But, in a way, that kind of illustrates what I, perhaps incoherently, was trying to get across.
Writing this piece, as scattered and odd as it is, has been a way for me to try to begin to articulate my ideas and thoughts about how words are vessels of meaning rather than the meanings themselves. What this idea means, I think, is that words become both places that are haunted and the presence that haunts them. When humans express emotion through words, those words are tools that can function and build and in wildly different ways for the people hearing and using them. And that’s scary, and can cause misunderstandings, and missed connections, but it’s also kind of an amazing and beautiful thing about being human.
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