Stagnant Memories

I still have pictures of my past family together hanging in my house.  I pass them daily and think, "I really need to take those down."  It was when I was with my boys' father.  I still had a step-daughter.  And a husband.  And a dog.  And a house.

It's not because I long for that again.  OK, maybe the house and the dog and the step-daughter part would be nice to have back... I just don't want my boys to forget what it was like when we were all together.  It's a part of their history.  It's a part of their memories.  Good or bad.  It's a part of them.

They were young when we separated.  Brady was 5 and Graham had just turned 3.  The likelihood of them having a lot of memories from that period are slim.  But they are affected by them.

Memories are like little tributaries that feed into the huge body of water that is you.  As long as they aren't dammed, they will flow continuously and the destination is where it is supposed to be..a fluid part of who you are.  If, however, they are dammed, it erodes the whole area around that one memory.

The bank starts to widen.  It engulfs grass and rocks that were meant to be left on shore.  Things that were previously moving along are now dead weight in the bottom.  It becomes sedentary.  Still.  Foul water that you can no longer safely drink.

When my most recent relationship ended, I tried to ignore the memories.  I knew where that would take me and I wasn't ready to invite it into who I was yet.  I needed for it to settle to the bottom and become foul so I wouldn't move on.  I needed to grieve not only that relationship, but all of them.

And boy did it become foul.  The memories were little pebbles that would have had no problem moving along, but I blocked the stream and so they made a home where there should have been only a sandy bottom.  Memories of laughter and inside jokes, affection and tenderness.  Memories that should have been pleasant instead brought pain.  And they contributed to the stench of the stagnant water.
I guess maybe it's time to take the pictures down and find them a home.  In a box.  And allow not only myself but my boys the chance to be fluid and not stagnant...to finally move on.

https://youtu.be/KwbeHSI-3Co

Ghost

Indigo Girls

There's a letter on the desktop that I dug out of a drawer

The last truce we ever came to

In our adolescent war

And I start to feel the fever

From the warm air through the screen

You come regular like seasons

Shadowing my dreams

And the Mississippi's mighty

But it starts in Minnesota

At a place that you could walk across

With five steps down

And I guess that's how you started

Like a pinprick to my heart

But at this point you rush right through me

And I start to drown

And there's not enough room

In this world for my pain

Signals cross and love gets lost

And time passed makes it plain

Of all my demon spirits

I need you the most

I'm in love with your ghost

I'm in love with your ghost

Dark and dangerous like a secret (don't tell a soul)

That gets whispered in a hush

When I wake the things I dreamed about you (don't tell a soul)

Last night make me blush

And you kiss me like a lover

Then you sting me like a viper

I go follow to the river

Play your memory like a piper

And I feel it like a sickness

How this love is killing me

I'd walk into the fingers

Of your fire willingly

And dance the edge of sanity

I've never been this close

In love with your ghost, ooh

Ooh

Unknowing captor

You never know how much you

Pierce my spirit

But I can't touch you

Can you hear it

A cry to be free

Oh I'm forever under lock and key

As you pass through me

Now I see your face before me

I would launch a thousand ships

To bring your heart back to my island

As the sand beneath me slips

As I burn up in your presence

And I know now how it feels

To be weakened like Achilles

With you always at my heels

This bitter pill I swallow

Is the silence that I keep

It poisons me I can't swim free

The river is too deep

Though I'm baptized by your touch

I am no worse than most

In love with your ghost (in love with your ghost)

You are shadowing my dreams

(In love with your ghost)

(In love with your ghost)