December 10, 2012

The final day I lived in Madison

Sometimes the past sneaks up behind me and wraps its uncomfortable but familiar arms around my shoulders and encapsulates me and haunts me and tires me. and refuses to release me.
It makes me see the entire world through its filter. Every street I see through a lens of an accomplishment or failure of a before. The place I sit, the socks I slipped my toes into this morning, all seem to be choices that have come to fruition as a consequence of something I can't remember anymore. Or something I can remember and simply choose not to.
What is happening? Why are all of these memories finding me everywhere? In places that they don't belong, in street signs and old buildings that I've never passed until today, and yet they have the color and contour of some other more familiar place.

Maybe I've made this a choice. The past houses a lot of pain. But maybe I've invited it in. maybe I even said "I'm ready to remember you, to give you room, to unlock you from your box and I'm ready to grieve you" but I'm not sure I knew how overwhelmed I would be by its constant presence. I'm not sure I knew it would manifest itself as if it were a standing, living person with me in every room, breathing in my ear and whispering to me about the memories, whether sweet or painful, that I'd prefer to forget. making me relive them every moment.

I dream of Seattle streets, I hear my mothers shouts, I see his cold, thin back turned to me, I feel his lifeless hug around my ribcage and I remember what it meant to be truly alone. To be with someone and actually without anyone.

I know as soon as I stop running from the past I will stop reliving it. But its hard, even now, to let it catch up with me. So much of me wants to keep running. and yet I know the faster I run the farther away I'll get from palpable, grounded, feelings. The realness in everything is lost when you are so concerned with running from things that you cannot run from. You have to live in a dream or how could you possibly keep it up?

I made Seattle another Wisconsin and Madison another Seattle, and what of the next place? Is it possible I can do it again and again and again forever?

Let me explain. Right now I'm sitting in a cafe in Madison. I'm in between yoga classes, and I've never stepped foot in this cafe before today. I've seen it a hundred times, I've been curious about coming in, but never did it. not until today. I don't even live in Madison anymore technically. Once inside, I see on the walls that they have live music on Saturdays and there are tons of people here talking, spending whole days inside. I could have met people here. I could have been happy here. But I chose the walls of my apartment.

It seems to me that places are best either in my memory or before I've ever arrived.

Promise you won't.
Promise you won't let me do this again.

I can't walk forward 10 years in my life and still be saying that I've hated everywhere I've been.
I can't keep moving and never find a still moment to see the beauty of the place where i already stand.

Now I know.

I know that all of these places, Seattle, Madison, the last 3 years of my life,
they were all shadows of him and the time we spent together and the hollow hardened person i became during those years. They were the shades of a past I was still living and healing from. and I know this. Fully.

I know i'm running from Madison because he's still there. Even though he never lived there with me, I grieved the loss of us within its city limits and that place is now just another painting of him. Only this time it was a painting made of tears, and an offering of catharsis rather than muddied, buried, broken numbness. I think it'd be one of those pictures you look at that you see as stunningly beautiful at first, but the longer you look the more its sadness sets in. Then all of a sudden its inescapable, and after you've looked long enough, all you can think about are the worst things you've ever done, and the more dangerous parts of the person you've ever been. 

Does that make sense? 

Because I think in a way that's what has made this place the hardest to let go of. I feel like i'm prying it from my own fingers, saying "you're ready, you can do this, you can move" 
But i still have this sad, silly painting clutched in my hands, and though I no longer want to look it at, I cannot bear the thought of being without it. 

I was pain. but it was my pain. 
And also, it was the last bits of him. 

Letting this place go means letting all of it go. It means moving forward once and for all. and although my feet are moving ahead, quickly, without me, my heart wants one last look.

At all the places we saw together.
At the times we laughed when we wanted to cry.
At all the moments that could have been.
All the chances he had to make it right.

This time I have to look back. I have to glance over my shoulder and truly know, and truly understand,
all that we were and all that we weren't.
and all that we will never be.

I feel almost ready to exhale this whole thing.
Almost ready to let it out.

But how long will i be almost ready to be ready?

Promise you won't.
Promise you won't do this to yourself again.
But better yet, promise you will.
Promise you will walk away with a tear in your eye
Promise you will promise to feel it all
Promise you'll never make yourself feel like you have to run
And if you have to paint a place into a sad picture, because that's what you need to get better,
then promise you will.

Its all getting better, but it does take time.