Leaving behind the past is like trying to leave a limb behind. Whether it be old friends who have fallen like leaves by the wayside of time, old ways of being that no longer fit with a new soul, old wounds & sorrows that haunt you. Forgoing a huge part of yourself because it seemingly no longer has an obvious use yet you're still attached to it, is a huge mountain to crawl over. It's like leaving an entire leg behind and then trying to run, you can't. But you know you must let go of things long past alive so you can live now, in the present instead of carrying around the wounds, heartaches and even fond memories of the past. The memories cling to you like the smell of smoke after walking through fire.
You're forced to crawl away slowly, painfully leaving a bloody trail reminding you of what you left behind, a giant piece of yourself. All you've known. A huge part of who you were, is now gone.
You're left to recreate the next part of your life, figuring out who you are now without the familiar weight of the past guiding you. If anything, they moor you, locking you into a long forgotten way of being that may or may not serve your life as you are now. The truth about starting over is that it's terrifyingly blank if you don't already have an idea of who you are & where you want to go. If you do then count yourself lucky. If you really are starting over, then hang on for a bumpy ride.
At first you constantly feel the past haunting you like a sad, hungry ghost with a deep need to be seen, as if the past never left. Please remember me, please come back with me now, things were better then. Just like one might think they feel a lost leg that it's still there, but it's not. Neither is your past but in your own mind, boiling over & over as you process the losses, the pain & the remnants of lust, cooking your thoughts down to a mushy vague feeling so that you cannot think clearly. Dulled by the constant pangs of sadness or guilt, or the yearnings no longer being satisfied. You are consumed by what was and the fear that it may never be again.
Because truthfully, you miss it. It may have hurt then or felt better but it was familiar, it existed. It was real. Now you're lost without this framework helping you figure out what happens next. Will it, things, love, pain, experience happen again? There is great uncertainty & thus, loss. Real solitude as you begin again.
It's only after you've been crawling for awhile and get far enough away from your past that it starts to fade into the background. It becomes a thin phantom of a memory wisping about instead of an ever present ghost trying to relive things gone by. Reminding you of failures, fears & passion that you feel slipping sadly, longingly into the background of your soul, out of reach. But for a long while as you move through the present, you feel every bump in the road and that reminds you that you no longer have that leg, or the past. That it's gone and all you can do is remember it, miss it and then grieve it's departure from your life. And that is a truly heart-wrenching passage to go through, like carrying around the weight of your own sadness.
4/27/22©Dm.
Borrowed Image: Tareck Raffoul
