Does the Past Exist? Part 2

Continue reading from Does the Past Exist? Part 1

“Normally, I would walk away from the mission completely, or get what I was looking for and just leave. Normally, I would walk away from the mess, and tell myself that I would come back tomorrow, or the next day, or never. No matter what, the bottom line is, normally I just wouldn’t care.

I wouldn’t challenge myself, I wouldn’t dare try to work through my resistance to become organized on the inside or the outside. But today I couldn’t walk away because that closet was me.

The closet, the challenge, the resistance, it was all a metaphor for my life. I can’t see what I am really looking for because I have too much stuff covering it up. I am too consumed with everything around me to hear a single sound my soul is making.

So I cleaned out my closet, and what did I find, just what I was looking for, my old binder from high school, filled with the beginnings of my words. I felt that I had 100% made the right decision.

I read everything I kept from high school. I had a surge of memories. I remembered my passion, and how I would not participate in physical education class, but instead I sat and wrote poetry.

I remembered a poem I named, “blue,” that I wrote for an old boyfriend of mine. I loved that poem very much, even though I can’t remember a single word. I remember thinking it was one of the best pieces I had written during that time. I remember my boyfriend wasn’t all that happy when I gave it to him. I remember him saying, “I already wrote a song named ‘blue.'”

Funny, I remember how hurt I was. I remember how I tried to tell him that I wasn’t trying to write a song for his band, I was just trying to write a poem for him. I remember how he didn’t care, but now all I realize is I didn’t save a copy for myself.

I think I did that a lot, gave poems away. I think I might be a terrible poet as well, but I write out my feelings and the words are always the best when they come from my soul. My heart is not a motivator, and my mind is always thinking. If I wrote out everything that I thought, well, I surely could never give up the pen.

But when my soul is on fire, things come out of me that make sense, and they have this cleansing effect on my mood. So the resurrection of the me, that has been hidden under all that stuff, is rising here in my closet, the quietest place I could find.

I have thought a good long while about writing, and talked a mean streak too. I feel I have to start with something, so right here right now I am starting with “nothing.” “Nothing” a common feeling for me.

Nothing is not the right word for it, but maybe empty or vacant. After all this time, I can see I have always enjoyed sadness. After I read and re-read some of my old poems I realized that I was quite a sad and depressed young teen. I was completely lost and hopeless. I think as a freshmen these feelings were the strongest.

That was not a particularly terrible year in my memory, but I guess that even though I was moved by sadness it was all in good fun. Once all the day to day bullshit fades away, like it does in every era, all there is to remember is an overall gratefulness for growth.

I fell in love with my first boyfriend that year, and most of my love poems were for him. He cheated on me, so he was also the first pain in romance I felt as well. In turn all of my poems of unworthiness where motivated from that hurt.

I wrote about not wanting to live, and feeling lonely, and I wrote about depression. It seems like a bunch of heavy shit for a 14 year old, but it makes me happy that even though I felt so strongly then, I sure don’t remember it that way now. I didn’t remember it that way when I was 20 either. I am grateful that I am able to remembered these experiences in a new light.

It seems that I wrote the most poetry when I was sad, that is definitely a common theme for me. But as an adult, I don’t have the time to wallow in sadness, to seek and discover the muse. I need to find it somewhere else, somewhere other than depression.

I want it to be in the earth and inside of me. I want to find it somewhere unknown. I want to find it in my life force and build it into a warm home. I want it to possess my pen, so I can break free of all the mundane and find joy in my experience.

I don’t want it now, I want it slowly, I want to experience life at a rate that my brain, body, and soul can understand. I don’t want to go backwards but I want to live in a way that makes sense to my humanity.

Things move to fast to know what really hit us these days.”