june 1 2024

I keep going back to a specific point in time in my life and it’s starting to feel pathological. I don’t know what I am hoping to find or to understand. I don’t think I’m trying to fix anything but I’ve developed a psychological preoccupation that even I am tired of. 

I let go of a memory and the next one in the series pops up, dragging me under and back in time. I want to be free of these ghosts but I don’t want to forget who I am. I want to grow up but I don’t want to lose everything that made me. 

More than anything, I don’t want to have suffered for nothing. Life has paid me back many times over but it still never feels like enough. I just want to write about my life but the memory of everything I’ve been through hangs over me like a wet quilt, a sour smell in the air.

Points in time split - there is only ever Before and After and Before is a painting from the classical era. Clean, simple, obvious, violent. I can see everything. And I don’t want it all to have been for nothing.

God, please…It can’t have all been for nothing.