santa clara

every time i hear this song, there's that welling right behind my jugular notch, and i get that urge to reach through my skin and pull out whatever bit of summer's memorial past was the reason i caused myself so much grief and fling it, floating, through the air and into, floating, the river. it's never fully gone, as i've only been removing it piece by piece. the bigger the fragment is that leaves the moisture of my soul, the slower the tumor regenerates, but as always, it looks the same size when i hear the first line.

back when i went on youth group retreats into the mountains and such, they had the ritual of burning sins. i would ceremoniously write whatever i could weigh as heaviest on that strip of notebook paper and toss it into whatever ash-spitting, roaring campfire they had built and ignited. mine always seemed to land at the edge of the fire no matter how much i crumpled them up, just close enough to catch those few embers necessary to blacken and disintegrate, and i always remember wondering and worrying whether my sins were less forgiven because i didn't put in enough heart for them to reach the crackling, all-consuming flames in the center of the blaze.

i sometimes miss things that i throw away. i really am a packrat. i keep things because i never know when i could use them, but when i do spring cleaning and toss out the fluff and cheap plastic and aged, folded-up pieces of paper, i later end up realizing that i could have used those.

again, we circle 'round back to the "sweeping-dirt-under-the-rug" metaphor my family's three-time psychiatrist liked to use with my stiff twelve-year-old upper lip. preserving things is great when it comes to sarcophagi and peaches and life as a state of existence, but not when it comes to "unhealthy" feelings. i am under the impression that most feelings are actually healthy, but like everything, only when handled correctly.

you can't construct an addition or remodel a house without the rest of the building there. i can literally look back on things that most people would look upon with disdain and probably feel a bit of the same, but i never regret anything. there are actions i have taken that are embarrassing to think about now, but i don't regret any of it, not a move. not one single breath. not one blink. of. my. eyes.

that being said, there are some things i'd dearly love to be rid of. i am in the sweet and exciting phase of a new relationship, and yet i still can't help wondering...had circumstances unfolded differently, had i said (or not said) certain things...i don't regret what happened, now, because in the end it made me stronger, but am i a horrible person for wondering "what if"? or do i just have the overactive imagination of a writer?

i need my hometown river. i need the banks of a river to stand on. i need to let this paper boat sail on. maybe it'll make it to the ocean and be swallowed by a whale. i just know that i can't sit my pretty self down and wait for the current to bring it back to me. because that's unhealthy.

-d