Exhume

I’m becoming wary of reminiscence. It’s starting to become a pathology to keep looking back. Always reconsidering, always realigning and repeating (and here we are speaking of change!). Picking at scabs will only create scars. Investigating every nook and cranny trying to dissect what could have been different. When it has been laid to rest, why do we feel the pull to become gravediggers, exhuming memories that never were real in the first place? Suffering with autopsies to try to understand where we went wrong. All my hopes for someone who never even existed, who couldn’t exist — where do I learn to let that go? How powerful is the grief for a childish desire, all these expectations burning away even the sliver of security, a blanket that could never keep your heart warm. How do I stop digging? How do I get the strength to muster to cut the threads that must be severed. The spool ran out a long time ago, so what am I trying to put through the eye of the needle? It’s all just ghosts. Of an idea an identity never rooted in actuality. Behind each relationship is its shadow. It swallows you whole and only with time will you learn to drop the shovel and let it go.