I want it to get easier. Memory wiped clean like a tabletop. Freed of the need to avoid certain objects, words, and sounds. Hissing, hitting the ceiling when I fail in the endeavor, when an idle glance accidentally brings it all screaming back into razor sharp focus. I no longer wish to have to circumnavigate my own mind, entire avenues dangerous and lost to me. No longer feeling forced to wend my way through my own thoughts like a hunted explorer armed with a machete; hacking through rough terrain, keeping myself as busy as possible, trying to maintain momentum and gain distance from that loping, ferocious thing just on the periphery of my consciousness.
I want to be able to look into a mirror without seeing that devastating and adored history staring back at me, without facing the knowledge that it will always be there, will never truly fade completely, will be buried with me but never within me.
The past does not dissipate. It is a tactile object we carry with us, a talisman that no matter how we struggle to separate from always finds its way back to us. The past is kudzu perpetually invading the present, wrapping its tendrils all around us, threatening to strangle us, to block out the light, to take over everything.
I want it to get easier. But the further I get from it, the harder it pulls.
Cyn Grace Sylvie 