PaCkInG… fOr BeTtEr Or WoRsT
It’s been a rainy weekend so I decided to do something I have procrastinated for some days. Not an easy task I confess, but necessary if I am to start walking to my new beginning.
I don’t have many touchable things to pack from him, but I have my pc full of images, msn logs, writings or emails from or for him that appear in front of my eyes whenever I’m searching for something else. Too aching.
So, what’s first? The pictures. I’ll store them in a cd and erase them from here….then? I guess I can put the rest of the things in the same cd…..it’s important to keep things together, isn’t it?
Now, the touchable objects….. 7 things I won’t ever wear….in a box.
His only love letter? Let me see….not in my purse…where then? Ok, I’ll get an envelope and I’ll put it in the same little box with the other 7 elements.
The chain with the cross….. No, I can’t get rid of it, that would cause more pain than relief….I’ll keep it till the day I….well, I’ll keep it and that’s it.
Next….Oh yes, let me erase his phone number from my cell phone and his email address from my messenger…..done.
I wish I could pack my memories as well….my feelings…my dead dreams….my love, but they are already stored in my heart and there’s no way to let them go, though I wish I could…. I wish I could…. I wish I could.
Phoenix Bird Home 
My Dear, again it is familiar to me. All the “What must go” and the “What must stay”.
It is part of the gate and the path. And those time when we stand there, wondering. Here it all is before me, the flotsam and jetsam of my accumulated days and years. What do I do with it now? I will borrow an image from Khalil Gibran, the prophet talking about lovers, like 2 trees. If they grow too close together, looking only at each other, they see nothing else, it is too dark. Worse, their roots don’t have enough space for healthy growth and they will atrophy. It is a bit the same with all the THINGS we accumulate. They become like a forest, which bring too much drakness to our lives for us to grow in health. It is is trick to learn when it is time to cut out what we no longer need, despite the memories, the old values that today are like artefacts in glass cases in a dusty museum. Dead. Make lots of space for fresh air, because on that breeze comes new dreams, new possibilities, new realities.
It’s not bad to travel light for a while. Whatever you believe you might need in the future from the past, chuck it all in your own special place and lock it with the 7 keys…..
Now, what about that sign? That’s amazing? Really, truly amazing. The Way of the World? I could never have imagined that you would have the graphics so ready to illustrate it! Perfect collaboration.
It’s one long serendipity after another today! And have you visited Ruth’s Phot A Day? She has managed (as always!) to find the time to post the words as well as the song of Judy Collins. It’s also perfect. Now I’m going to the previous post. See you there………..
This is better for me 🙂 🙂
regards
ugyen
Ooooops!!!………….
……………………………….But it is still upsetting me that you appear as una rana on Ruth’s etc. You are NOT, NEVER! SXXXX
Recently, I too had to delete the emails and instant messages, throw away postcards and photos, and eliminate all traces of a man I loved – loved insanely with all my heart and soul. It took me months – I did it in stages. (First I put them all on a disk and put the disk and the postcards and photos in an envelope and hid it.) It was a long time before I wa sable to throw that envelope in the garbage! But I think it did help to do it – not having traces of him all over my house, things I can take out and look at when I feel weak or sad, is better – I am doing better, I feel better, now. I can think about him without such grief and anger. I still don’t understand, I still want to ask WHY – why did you love me and then stop loving me? How does that happen? But over time my love has – not ended, but softened, relaxed, I have let go. In fact I’ll share a song I love that I think of often – Calypso, by Suzanne Vega:
My name is Calypso
And I have lived alone
I live on an island
And I waken to the dawn
A long time ago
I watched him struggle with the sea
I knew that he was drowning
And I brought him into me
Now today
Come morning light
He sails away
After one last night
I let him go.
My name is Calypso
My garden overflows
Thick and wild and hidden
Is the sweetness there that grows
My hair it blows long
As I sing into the wind
My name is Calypso
And I have lived alone
I live on an island
I tell of nights
Where I could taste the salt on his skin
Salt of the waves
And of tears
And though he,pulled away
I kept him here for years
I let him go
My name is Calypso
I have let him go
In the dawn he sails away
To be gone forever more
And the waves will take him in again
But he’ll know their ways now
I will stand upon the shore
With a clean heart
And my song in the wind
The sand will sting my feet
And the sky will burn
It’s a lonely time ahead
I do not ask him to return
I let him go
I let him go
Jenny, your words brought some peace to my heart. I can see your story is in some way similar to mine….I guess all the love stories have something in common. Though I know you have suffered, it’s good to know your heart is healing and mine will too someday….won’t it?
All the process you went through is what I’m living now so I hope, in the future, to be able to share my story with someone else, and tell her or him the things you are telling me now.
Thank you for being there, thank you for your words and thank you for the hope you gave me in your comment.
Love, Ani
Yes, your heart will heal. It took me a long time – it’s just now almost a year since I last saw him, and only now can I think of him with only a flicker of pain, instead of paralyzing anguish! My thoughts turn to him once or twice a day, instead of constantly. If he walked in on me today, I still don’t know what I’d do, how I’d feel – but I have more confidence that I’d choose the right path, the one I always should have chosen, which is to walk away from my feelings towards him. (My story is much more complicated in that I am married, wish to stay married, my husband knows nothing of my feelings for this other man. I did not seek him out, and I never acted on those feelings, but they controlled my every move for several years.)
Yes, heart will heal eventually, altho some people take forever to be cure. But the scar will always be there, as a living prove that we have won the battle of emotion.
A very interesting blog.