It Took Me 45 M̶i̶n̶u̶t̶e̶s̶ Years to Write This

I have never watched my wedding video. It was so important to me back then to record it but it has never occurred to me to watch it. When my kids were growing up I took thousands of pictures of them. I had them printed, bought photo albums, and sorted those pictures into them. But have rarely looked at them.

You see, I’m a complicated emotional mixture. I cherish the moments of my life actively while they are happening. Sometimes this results in a picture or video, but usually, it just results in another more covert system I have. I take a moment and encapsulate it in my mind. I file it under different emotional responses it engendered. I can’t usually look very closely at those emotions at the time but I make sure to save them for later, to be studied and synthesized with other like-moments in an attempt to make sense.

The other day I wrote Rejected. When my. husband read it, he thought it was about a break-up. It wasn’t. Or was it? Was it about being fired? Maybe. It was about none of these things and all of these things. It was about being in the midst of something I was working so hard on and believing things were going okay, only to be blinded by rejection. Friendships, family, work, community. I have had my share of rejection which I have rarely been able to process well at the moment. Looking back to the catalog in my brain I was finally able to put some pieces together and understand something about myself.

Writing is a good way for me to do this work. I have been processing a lot of my files lately in this way. Maybe my files will become cleared out and I’ll turn to a seemingly healthier practice of journaling. Experiencing and processing at the same time? Lofty goals. I shall take a note of how I feel about this and file it away for another time.