To the one who can't move on...I understand you now.
I never have before, and I'm guilty of judging you I'll admit. But I understand your feelings now.
I understand how you are plagued with a vast montage of memories that never seem to quit playing over and over in your head. They dance in and out of your thoughts in the silence of your solitude. Repeatedly they follow an endless track that jerks your emotions high and low like a rollercoaster.
It's hard because those memories hold so much joy, and it feels like your life currently has gone...well, downhill. And of course to climb uphill again means to make new and better memories, but yet you cling to the old ones in fear of forgetting.
How could you forget, you ask? I mean you just said those memories were so full of joy, so how could one forget about them?
Good question.
I guess you don't forget... you just have to push them aside. You feel like your brain can still hold the big stuff - the really fun, exhilarating, happiest moments are locked away in the long-term. But suddenly the details get brushed into the cracks and crevices of the brain to create space for the new thoughts and memories moving in. A fine layer of dust collects over the details that were once showcased at the front of your mind. They don't fade from existence; you just forget they're there. You can't juggle it all - new things, old things - and you feel helpless as the details slip away into oblivion.
Thus begins a war in the mind between remembering and forgetting.
If you cling to the has-been's... If the source of your smile is in a past life, then everything in the current life dims in comparison.
Life in comparison is the worst.
Maybe it's not just memories, but people. More specifically, a person.
A significant person that changed your life and created some of your favorite moments in time... but they remained an almost. And you miss your life with that person and inevitable discontentment rises without them. But if you can only re-live life with that person in your head, it feels better than being without them at all.
And that's when it's hardest to let go, because if you let go of the person, you have to let go of the memories. You have to pry them from shaking hands and clenched fingers and put them aside in order to fully embrace the life you live now.
The opposite is also true... If you let go of the memories, you let go of the person. I don't know which is harder. Maybe it's not fear of forgetting, but fear that something or someone so great won't happen twice.
I understand how exhausting it is trying to keep up with two lives: one in your head and one that's right in front of you.
I understand now, why the whole thing sounds dramatic... Letting go. Moving on. Wanting to move on, but not wanting to at the same time. It's complicated.
But I also know there's a reason that time in your life is over. I know you are blessed to have known those people, that person, experienced those memories. I know moving on is what you need, or else you'll grow tired of living in the shadow of an old life. Realistically, life ahead may be better or worse than what you've experienced, but there is power in perspective.
We as humans are meant to move on - not to live in the past or even live in the future. There would be no such thing as contentment if we lived anywhere but the present. In the same way I don't want to mourn the days of old, I don't want to pine for a seemingly better life in the future. I look to the future with hope, but remain satisfied with the place I'm in.
I'm going to take life as it comes. I'm going to box up my favorite memories with the knowledge that I will always have them. Time may blur the details, but time will also heal. I'm going to clear a space in anticipation of each moment I encounter that needs a place to stay, because there is room now... there is room for fresh memories because the old ones have retired.
They are at peace; and when I close my eyes, I find that I am too.
I understand it's not easy.
I understand that it hurts.
But I understand it's worth it.
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