Life hits with some majorly unexpected curveballs sometimes and I’ve got some things that need to be let go of, released, and buried before moving forward with anything in my life.  Often we don’t realize the actual weight of what we carry with us.  Fear, regret, anger, pain—all of these things no matter the cause are incredibly heavy.  Each small pebble thrown on over the years, individually seems harmless, mere ounces.  But when we add it up over time, we are dealing with tons of baggage and emotions tied to it.    I’ve thought about certain events in my life for years.  The pain, the anger, the frustration, the feeling of absolute helplessness at being put in situations I felt I had no way out of.  The hurt of what the closest people did to me without a second thought or barely a sign of remorse—and this is not a victim thing, these are actual verifiable events of what was done to me.  I think about how much of that was due to miscommunication and misunderstanding and how much of it was the reality of the person’s feelings at the time.  And I realize that too, the constant gymnastics of trying to make sense of someone else’s thought patterns and their resulting actions, is heavy and exhausting—we can never know what was really going through someone’s mind—we have to take their word and we either trust or we don’t.  So this is about the act of truly leaving behind what no longer serves.  If we are ever to move on in a healthy and productive way, we have to navigate the tricky realm of honoring what we feel and simultaneously NOT assigning value to it.  Not to say our feelings mean nothing, but we don’t allow the feeling to determine or justify our actions.  When we decide to forgive an act, that act doesn’t go away but the thought pattern and emotion tied to it become null and void.  Forgiveness is the detachment of our emotion from the event—we don’t forget what happened but we don’t allow it to determine how we feel.  IE, one bad action doesn’t negate a lifetime of positive.  We move on.      

While I was always able to move forward, moving on has been a challenge for me—this entire time.  I have a gift where my mind is a steel trap for specific events, even more so for high-emotion, high-stress, high-impact events.  Certain events felt devastating to me for decades and I’ve finally managed to put them down to a dull ache where most days they aren’t consuming me anymore.  The desire for the truth never went away, but I got to a point where I didn’t obsess over needing to know—I have other things to do and I knew that if I spent my time fixated on the past (which is quickly becoming the DISTANT past), then I would have to accept not knowing—and accept my decision to stay.  Then, after a beautiful holiday spent warmly with love and affection (probably more so than any other holiday we’ve had together), time spent with family and enjoying each other’s company, without any warning, a specific event from over two decades ago was brought up from another person’s perspective.  This event gutted me at the time and I’ve struggled all that time to reconcile what was done with the pain of it without an apology, and it wracked my brain with near obsessive repetition for many, many years.  If I think about it too long it still makes my heart drop. And now, out of nowhere this person has the audacity to talk to me about their feelings and concerns and how hurt they were at the time when they were the ones who perpetrated the entire event—and now they talk about their pain related to my actions in the situation.  This was never something I thought I would have to defend myself about because I was NOT in the wrong on any level–this was a very black and white, action/reaction, decision/consequence moment.  Throw in this person NEVER acknowledged any degree of hurt or frustration in this before—quite frankly they acted near entitled for committing the act in the first place—and I’ve borne the weight of it alone and confused, wondering what I did to cause it when there was NOTHING to garner what happened.  Now I’m expected to evaluate MY actions in this?  Actions that resulted from what this person did to me?

I felt entirely suffocated in that moment.  First, I was hearing new information related to this moment for the first time in over two decades.  I’d spent all that time with one version (or a partial version) of what happened and now information was suddenly being disclosed, information that solidified even further it had nothing to do with me—it had to do with a third party’s feelings towards me and the “perpetrator’s” inability to step up.  When you have a specific version of events or you’ve had to piece together what happened and now it’s a different story, that’s a lot.  Second, I was being asked to essentially defend myself for things that were only speculation, half-truths.  Third, this couldn’t have been more left-field, especially hearing the hurt this person felt at the time.  I don’t feel I need to justify anything and my conscience is clean in that there was no malice in what I did—I just didn’t care how the “perpetrator” felt any longer and did what felt right for me. Lastly, questions of the last two decades like who we are together and do we love each other or because we thought the other person wanted it, are my feelings stronger than this person’s, and how DID we come back together, all insecurity came flooding through.  Suddenly it felt like all this time was a lie or wasted.  And I don’t want to waste anymore time in my life—and I want the truth, not necessarily about what happened, but about what we are doing together and how we are actually going to move on. In order to truly move on, we need to either hash it out entirely or bury it before it buries us. 

Now, as it pertains to more recent events, I’ve shared before that this past year wasn’t an entire dumpster fire by any means—my husband and I had some fantastic moments in making strides together as a couple, in progress with our business, and I’ve made a ton of progress with my health.  That isn’t to say this hasn’t been a difficult year.  Truthfully, this was the most time I’ve ever spent in limbo.  It felt like a majority of my time was waiting for an answer of some kind or other whether it was personally or professionally or related to someone close to me.  The wait is difficult enough without the added pressure of it being a life or death or life-altering situation.  Then there were the absolute left-field moments of unexpected loss and the realization that we never know how much time we have and we need to more carefully decide how we want to live, what we want to do, what we want to carry.  Even for things outside of my relationships, things related to work and my future and a path forward, what do I want to take with me?  Because I’m feeling the weight of all of those pebbles and I can barely drag the bag anymore let alone carry it.  I’ve carried it all this time as a mark of what I’ve done and what I’ve been through, as some history that would prove or justify my worth and decisions.  I’ve carried it in hopes of changing the event (which I know I can’t) or changing how I feel about it (which I am rarely successful at).  I’ve carried other people’s feelings about this as well, thinking if I bore the burden they would finally appreciate me.  They’ve only asked me to carry more. On the precipice of a new calendar year, hearing other people’s goals, I add my own: I’m putting down all the crap and deciding what works for me.  I don’t have time to deal with the left-field random crap that comes from my brain or others—to really move on, that habit needs to die.  And with it, so does the habit of rehashing those moments.  So for 2025, it’s letting go.  It doesn’t work, it serves no purpose, it stays here and goes no further.  This isn’t closing a chapter, this is closing a book and leaving it where it is. I was always afraid of forgetting but I never asked what I got out of remembering.  I don’t want to forget all of it, but I don’t need to feel it again.  So, I am grateful for my progress, for my life, for my future, my goals—and I am ready to say goodbye to what I thought I knew for what I want to know.  It’s time to move on.