To Be Read..

It feels like today should be a Friday the 13th and not a Wednesday. Everything feels dark and foreboding. Like a devastating storm secretly waits on the horizon, hidden by the lie of the sun on my face. My heart feels heavy today. Like it doesn’t belong in my body, it carries too much for it all to fit. 

My eight year old struggled to go to sleep last night. He was having a lot of really big emotions and thoughts surrounding a lot of changes in life right now. So as I lay with him tracing his face (something I’ve been doing since he was a baby to help him sleep), I talked him through how he is in charge of his emotions and his thoughts. I told him how he can choose to take the scary ones, the stressful ones, and just put them on a shelf for tomorrow when he’s ready to think about them and talk about them. Or he can decide to keep thinking about them until he feels like he’s worked it all out in his mind enough to where he can relax and go to sleep. 

It hit me then, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing my entire life. It’s how I have survived this long. Sort of like a “to be read” pile of books that you just keep accumulating with a promise to yourself that you will read them one day. I’ve been storing memories like a stack of books I’ll come back to. Some until I was older and could process them, others just until I was brave enough to face them again. Problem is, I now have so many fucking thoughts and memories on my shelves, they are bowing from the weight. They will surely give out at some point right? I can only cram so many up there for “tomorrow” before the entire damn thing crumbles and falls apart. Unable to carry them any longer. Before I crumble. 

Lately I’ve been taking a few off the shelf. Examining them in real time. Keeping them with me. Playing through the different scenarios, emotions, and actions that went into each thought or memory I have stored away. Flipping through the pages if you will. Re-visiting the words I highlighted. Carrying the weight of it, until I can make it make sense. I think I’ve reached a point in my life where I know that my shelf is too full. It’s too chaotic. It’s too heavy and I can hear the groaning of the old wood as it tries to stay strong under the burden of it all. It’s time to start reading some of these books, so that I can let them go and close them for good.