Stirring Point

You’re still here after all these years. I’m starting to think you’re lodged in the gut like an inoperable bullet. A lead slug, to be exact, leaching toxins into the bloodstream and slowly poisoning the organs. My optimism tries convincing me that you’re a gift. It claims you’re a remnant, an artifact from adolescence I’m meant to carry. My realist side disagrees. It implores me to step up and work this all out. Now’s the time to let the memory die.

It’s a Stockholm syndrome of sorts. At first, I wanted nothing more than to be free of the loss. But I clung to the pain because it kept us close. If I mourned you—mourned us—then moving on was a future act to be avoided until the last possible second. Adulthood eventually forced a reckoning and I had to refocus the mind. But it never took. And now you’re permanently lodged: a sticky, long-term emotional story trapped in a prison of my own making. 

Why are some memories stronger than the actual moments that caused them? Is it the compounding nature of time’s second guessing? Is it the way hindsight lashes us with 20/20 vision? The wrong memory at the right moment buckles the knees. It climbs through the mind like a worm through dirt and punches through our defenses. Our hobbies and entertainment leap forward to distract us, but distractions never fix what we want them to. They keep us busy, but only for a time.

To face you head-on feels calamitous. You were just another human when we were kids. Now, you’ve morphed into an idea. Is that sane? If I fought the idea of you less, would that loosen your grip? Or would it somehow make me more susceptible to it? Should I stop raging against the way I see you and accept the scar tissue that life left behind? What are the chances I’ll wake up tomorrow and you won’t be there? 

The doubts and questions are perpetual. Two and a half decades of “what-ifs” are a constant reminder that I’m tethered to the past. I drag this emotional anvil because I’m incapable of dropping the rope. The dog years have fused its strands to my skin.

Maybe the way out is through and I’m halfway there. Or maybe my good fortune requires your weight as tribute. Whatever is necessary, I’m here for the cure. You’ve been squatting too long and now it’s time for you to go.