The Past and Where you Put it

Dear Past,

I can see why people want to forget you. I can see why people don't want to talk about you or look at your documentations. I thought I was up to it. Now I have to get drunk. Thanks so much. I mean, truthfully it's not your fault. It is NOT your fault. I'm being melodramatic, I know. It would be better to say "it is what it is" and have a good laugh and move on. But you know, Past, I have a rash on my face. An unexplained rash that has been here for weeks. It continues to spread and grow and it is not an allergic reaction to anything. It is just here. Just hanging out on my dry, patchy face. And while sometimes I can ignore it or put some medicine on it and keep going, after spending some time with you tonight, Past, I am looking at this rash thinking "how apt". I mean really, what a great symbol of it all.

I do recognize that sometimes when I hang out with you, Past, I leave thinking "thank god" and "hooray for time passing". Mostly I probably think that, no offense, but tonight--paired with a foot injury that keeps me in orthopedic shoes, a moc-turtleneck I thought was comfortable, and a red patchy rash extending across my face--I found myself really missing you.

I mean, the thing is, Past, we had some good times. And above the good times, what I'm reflecting upon tonight, is how OLD I am. How sadly, insufferably old I have become. There was this person, this "me" that you were sharing with me, and that person looks so different than what I am now. I am having a hard time over here. And I know you're not trying to get me down, you're just presenting the facts. But the facts are hurtful. I mean, I wish you would have TOLD me, Past--I wish you would have told me what was going to happen. How everything was going to spread out and sag and swell and then sag even more. How my hair was going to get thin and limp and my freckles would fade and my chins would flow over one another like an American waterfall if I ever moved my head and my eyes would get foggy and my expressions would become more unsightly than they are creative. I wish you would have told me. Yes, I know if you had I couldn't have believed it, but Past, I have to say, I wish I could have found a way.

Nostalgia is a funny feeling. Sometimes it's laced with regret and remembering, and sometimes it's bookended by laughter and greatfulness. Tonight it's confusing. I love those things I saw pictures of. I love those times and the way I can remember them. But hey, how did that person experiencing all those things in the pictures become so different? That person does not seem like this person with an awful rash and broken feet. I don't even remember I smiled like that.

I don't remember I could smile like that. Do you know what that means? I looked at myself, and I didn't remember I could be like that. I don't remember. It's not even that long ago, and I don't remember it. I don't remember how to do it anymore. I know how to be happy, and I smile truly, but that thing--those faces--you showed to me tonight? I don't remember them.

I am smarter now, that much we can agree on. I am kinder, clearer, calmer. All of that is good. for all of that I am grateful, and for all of that I would not go back. But to look sweet and alive and excited and enraptured and consumed and hopeful and charged? Well, I might feel those things still, but I don't look them. The proof is in you, Past, you know that. To look them again, what a feeling. The cheese, the burritos, the late nights, the lack of fruit, the cigarettes, the worry, the poor time management, the brown food diet, the beer. It's all gotten part of me.


The question is, Past, can I turn this into something we look at together and laugh about and say we learned from and move on? Or is this just who I am now?

Is it? Or is it?
Mamma

Dear Worry and Mice

The mice have been in my shoes. Can't wear the old ones like I used to, they won't close, 13 black ones, 4 reds, a little note at the bottom of each. You waste too much you want too much you weren't paying attention. Everything seemed clearer a bit ago but slowing down slows it all down, which seems like a feat considering that at any time before now it would have seemed slow. Slowest. This is the slowest. This is the slowest of the right now in memory. The memory has a way of being against me.

I used to stay up late, young, with a fever to keep going and an angst to get farther: all the "you'll see"s and "just wait until"s. Now it's sitting staring at the lamp with yellow light that flickers behind the dirty screen that's not mine with a worry and a far away sickness: the "what is this" and "what if not". Not doing so well with the Wide Open Spaces bit of the Rest of my Life; the long long path of nothing but what I make of it. I knew this was coming but I didn't know how it would feel and it feels old--no I feel old--and it feels like it knows and it's laughing at me, challenging me. The Everything about Right Now which is the same as Tomorrow is challenging me and I could take it, hard, if it didn't take long. But I know it takes long. It takes until I die. How do I not get tired. How do I not turn the volume of the show up and stare off, far away. How do I not tune out to something someone else already did when it's most comforting to see a final product--any final product. Do the dishes again, you know where they go. Pick out an outfit from the clothes that don't fit anymore, they're the only ones you own. Make a list on the back of an old receipt, making a list is almost like actually doing something.

That thing people think when they're safe inside an educational construct, that "maybe you're not good enough"--that thing you quiet with the praise of your peers and the looming deadline of something you wouldn't complete on your own? That thing is true. MAYBE YOU'RE NOT. MAYBE YOU'RE REALLY NOT. A lot of people aren't. Maybe you're one of them. Could be. Truly, very well could be. Your own abstract ideas about how good you are and what you can accomplish and the stars you're going to reach for and the star you're going to be don't mean anything. What you're doing right now means something. And what you're doing right now is dishes and staring at an old cheap lamp and watching the mice shit in your shoes that don't have soles anymore, and the part about the soles is not a metaphor. Your shoes don't have soles anymore. And they're filled with mouse shit. And you can't kill the mice. That's not a metaphor either. You can't kill them. You can't. And on your off days you would say that also you are unable to get your life into high gear--the highest of moving gears--and don't even know what they look like. What do the gears look like. What do any of the gears look like?
Someone else has made them. While you were thinking about what your life looks like and feels like, someone else has already made an interactive diagram about what YOUR EXACT LIFE looks like and feels like. The people who made these things were not waiting for anything. They just went forward and made programs for you to feel and think the things that you, as yourself, were not ready or able to think or feel, but TO ANYONE ELSE would provide a window into the deeper emotional psyche of you. Someone smarter has created a project for people to know you better, and you don't even know yourself. Enjoy that.

Not that it's bad. It's not terrible, is it. No. But sometimes it mounts on itself.