Two years ago I had gone back. Looking for a way to write myself back into that life I remembered in those softly-beautiful, dry mountain-hills. But there was someone else writing faster. More determined, finishing chapters before I was able to find and place my few carefully chosen words on paper so crumbly-fragile. Nothing resolved. We were both too hurt. Too scared to unearth what was buried.
WHY MUST YOU OVER-DRAMATIZE EVERYTHING, ALWAYS? said, I s'pose everyone. But I don't. Or so I never did. The rational brain-ALWAYS. The compass to solid ground-ALWAYS. The balance against chaos, the quiet voice of peace, the humour in the sadness-that was my role-ALWAYS. This story never made sense.
And here I sit, staring at opened suitcases left semi-empty on the floor, the vomited contents of snow-board boots, the business plan of my first daycare, and some other things still too difficult to share lying beside. ...And then my ring. The same gold thin band worn by my great-grandmother never met. Cold-heartedly I remember sliding it off my finger and putting it in that box then the suitcase, knowing that was the safest place for the moment.
It wasn't just the hiding ring in the suitcases of memories. It was seeing David too-only yesterday, and the video I watched of his younger brother singing and playing the guitar-just today. Both reminders of my young now ex-husband and our confused youth together. This whole going home thing is frightening me. I've never been a coward. I've never been unable to face a situation. But here I am now. Unable to look into a suitcase. I'm trusting my situation was out of the ordinary, the surrounding circumstances simply too bizarre, making for a mess with no formula for clean-up.
Things, don't take care of themselves, tho. Problems, they don't self-resolve. This is one I just don't like facing. It's easier to keep shoving it into the closet and closing the door quickly before everything falls out on top of me. This mess is too big, too overwhelming to even know where to start.
