a letter to days forgotten

And then came the day I hoped, without believing, would come. I forgot your name. The forgetting lasted more than a second, but not more than a few moments. I knew I wanted to remember you, to find you in the recesses of my mind, or something. But I couldn't think of you, even though it was cold and there was some point in a past life I always thought I would need to turn to you when I couldn't feel my toes. At the very least, in the darker moments because I thought I'd need something for a rainy day. My mom taught me to save up for a rainy day and we always had our differences; what we felt we should be saving was only one of them. I guess I thought (and dreaded) that for me, it would always be you. And then came the day that I knew that it was raining, but that it wasn't you. And just like that, I was free. Over and over again, free.

But before that freedom, and after the day you said good-bye like only a coward could, a lot of days went by that I wasn't even thinking about you. There were lots of rainy days that my mind never even acknowledged your absence as something noteworthy; it forgot that I didn't even really have rainy days before you. Those days that went by unacknowledged, un-noted, and not today, were the real testaments to how irrelevant you had become to me. Those days I learned to come home and turn on all the lights in the living room and one set of lights in the kitchen to embrace brightness and read a book instead of crumpling into bed motionless--those days, and not today, are the ones I stood by myself in the way that I dreamt of in high school.

I'm proud that you don't know me today. I feel no desire to explain any part of myself to you. I think back on you only as a mile marker of a place I came from, and I can't wait for the rest of the miles.

Maybe I wish I knew which day, which moment, nothing was about you anymore. Maybe that would have given me some peace of mind at the time. To know that every decision was for myself again. But from where I stand now, that moment doesn't matter to me anymore. Because there were so many moments after that one. And that was the more important accomplishment.

Refusing to be haunted doesn't always come easy, you know.

Facing things head on doesn't always come easy, but you wouldn't know.