A bit of an introspective night, here. I revisited and cleared out the email archives, bringing things up to present and deleting the last of the lingering past. It felt… bittersweet.
There was a time when I was afraid to let things go; forever hoping that somehow, hanging onto archives, even if I never actually read them, meant that I wasn’t giving up hope on others (or myself in relation to them). Silly, I suppose. Gone is gone until it isn’t anymore, right?
I’m sitting here with a very odd sensation in my stomach. It’s not quite anxiety; it’s that feeling you get when you watch someone leaving and you know they won’t be back. Not necessarily due to “something bad”, but definitely a leaving or loss that is, for all intents and purposes, felt to be a certainty in its permanence.
I still miss them all, of course. The logical part of my mind firmly used the “select all” and “delete” buttons while the rest of me wilted just a little for feeling all the above.
In this moment, typing, suddenly my eyes are leaking. I recognize the feeling in my stomach; it’s a shade of an older mourning. Acceptance, I think… but not free of sorrow.
There is a shimmer of good things in it, however contradictory that may sound; I am happy to finally be able to do this, even as I am sad that I reach the moment in which I can. Don’t suppose any of us really enjoy endings. But it is surely worse to carry them as if they are not so.
Release and relief, but not without something of a sense of regret. I regret that it is possible to feel this way even as I realize it is probably a very healthy and appropriate feeling.
The decision finally made itself when I realized that, in order to embrace all the happy coming my way, I had to make room by clearly out the sad.
Nothing personal, other than the light, lingering sense that I am somehow giving up on these people. If you know me, then you know how hard I struggle against ever giving up on much of anything. (wry grin) I suppose that’s a good lesson to learn as well, but it sure doesn’t feel that way.
I think the most important thought that I want to get “out here” is that I am genuinely having difficulty with not feeling sorry about it. On the one hand, I can’t afford to do this anymore and, on the other, that niggling little ember that keeps whispering from the corners of my mind, “What if…”
In reality, that little whisper is progress. It used to say, “If only…” and that was much harder. “What if…” is much easier to respond to, “What is has to be more important than ‘what if’ or else I’m going to be grieving for missed ones all my life.”
I’m just not willing to do that anymore.
Progress indeed.
Raking mental leaves
Setting out archival sheaves
Mulch of memory