When the past hijacks your present

Note the traveling band that moved from my closet
into my car into a storage unit. For now.

So, I am in the process of moving. More like, I am in the process of doing all these piddly fixes and repairs to my old house, and organizing everything I own in preparation to move to my new house.

When you clean out your closets, you really...clean out your closets.

I haven't learned that trick yet that I think most people do better than me. You know that trick where people just...move on. The ironic thing is that I was talking to a good friend of mine that has really been a mentor of mine for the past fifteen years, and she was asking me if I was excited about the move and the new community.

"You move on really easily, though" she said.

I do? Well, that was news to me.

What she really meant was that, I have no problem making new friends. And the opposite end of that pendulum? I have no problem saying good bye to friends.

Ouch.

Her comment has brought me into soul searching. Cleaning out my closets here has send me into the abyss. The past. The broken past. The mistakes.

Isn't it funny how we look to the past and never remember the full truth? It can either serve our self-pity or as a device to romanticize how things never really were.

So my new personal mission is to remind people that i don't say good bye easily, even though it appears that I do. I simply internalize it. Hide it away. The alternative is more painful for me, so it became a defense mechanism. Appearing to have the ability to move on easily, to be a social chameleon will never allow me to be fully known.

So that's the trick. Starting over. Not giving up on myself, the ability to change, to forgive myself, to remember that past mistakes don't define my future. It is a choice three hundred times a day to not let the past hijack my present. And hopefully, lifting the veil off of our defense mechanisms helps us all to be a little more open with each other.

At least, that's my hope.