Scared Bunny

There are certain things in my life I am scared I will always associate with certain people. Maybe I hold on to things too long, but there are parts of town I just won’t go to because it hurts too bad. There are certain zip and area codes I hate to use. I still remember an old phone number from a long ago ex and when I see the last 4 digits I feel a sense of regret. I smell certain perfumes and remember someone who wore them. I eat at certain restaurants and remember taking someone there.

It doesn’t even have to make sense. I lived in a certain area code for 2 years. I could tell you my address, phone number, where we shopped, but when I see that area code I think about someone I met years later who had that area code and I feel a sense of loss.

There are places I will never travel again. I liked them, but they belong to the past and going would be a reminder. (No, Heather, you didn't get Vegas. You weren't that strong. I'd even go back to that bar, dance again and go to the after party. And this time if the girl tried to take my date, her date would end up on the floor.) These are places that I associate with something real, and not something that was purely one-sided. These are places that just the thought of visiting brings a tear to my eye and a flood of memories. The person who shares these memories knows who she is.

But all of these things are also in the past and I have to somehow find a way to put them behind me. The past is real. It happened. But allowing yourself to feel the pain over and over is to give in to fantasy. That pain is not real. Even the memories are not real. They are our distortions of what happened and by dwelling on them we allow them to hurt us as if we were living through the pain again.

That it what I am working on and where I am in life. I never let go of a lot of my past, and not just the recent past. I need to move forward and have a healthy life. You can't do that holding on so tight to everything that has come before.

I've decided not to be the sum of what has happened in the past and instead be what happens from one minute to the next.