“A desire to forget the past,” he said, “is a form of self-suicide.”

I have a deep secret.  One I’m willing to share because successes triumph when acknowledgement thrives.

Sometimes, late at night, when I am alone in my thoughts and with my keyboard, I am brilliantly happy.  In these nights, I find myself, piece by piece, emotions laid out before me as I assess the day and reinvent my goals.  My happiness is laced with guilt, as one of my main shortcomings is to over-analyze the personal: relationships, moments, wording…. the humanity of each decision I was faced with.  For a few minutes, I allow the questions to seep down to the deepest, darkest, parts of my being- where very little thrives or ever escapes and it breathes new life into the, ‘should haves,’ or the, ‘why didn’t yous,’ and most of all the, ‘did you do the right things.’  In truth, I carry these questions with me and the answers I give myself.  I feel that I’m stronger with assessments and questions than blindly walking through life without enlightenment or the courage to demand better from myself.

Nights like tonight, harbor a reason behind the question.  I call it the chill of early September air, and the pain of remembering one of the hardest points in my life, two years earlier.

I found a passage in a book I’ve read for the second time which struck me as absolute perfection and I wanted to share.  After blogging for almost 9 years and writing for over 16, if there’s something I’ve recognized, it’s the un-tameable power of self-reflection.

“I am overwhelmed by the power of remembrance.  I do not dwell in this precise and fleeting moment, but in the accumulation of all my moments for as far back as my human memory goes.   I am my past and to deny my past is to deny myself because the life I lived right up to this ephemeral instant defines who I am.  My life is not in me, it is in what I remember and I do not possess what I remember so much as it possesses me.  I think most of us are afraid that if we let ourselves feel our sorrow for the passing of the life that was, we will never regain our composure again.  But the fear is misplaced.  What should truly frighten us is the possibility that we might lost the power to recall the life we lived, which gives us our connection to ourselves.  Our most terrifying diseases aren’t the ones that take our life; they’re the ones that cast us adrift on an empty sea by depriving us of our memories.” (First You Have To Row A Little Boat,  Richard Bode.)

Anger.  I believe anger is that disease.  Anger for the past, for a job loss, a loss of a friend or lover: but it is the most detrimental of emotions, when used against ourselves.

So I don’t forget, I tuck away like the love letters hidden in a box, or a picture that resides behind another in the hallway frame.  I see the decisions, I acknowledge my part and somehow, like the fall smells that drift in and out my window, I reside myself to change and accept the scent of adventure in the unknown.  Imagine a world where we all shared our secrets- the deepest ones.  That one is mine.