They Fade?

Sometimes I think about days gone past. Days gone so quickly that I wonder if they ever truly happened. Moments that slipped from my grasp like water through sand. Moments that I wish I could remember with more clarity and give proper respect to.

I clearly remember some of the most painful things that have ever happened to me and yet I cannot remember with any resonance the first time I saw my little sister when she came home from the hospital, or how I met some of my best friends. But I can recall with aching intensity the face of my mother in her last hours of life or the last glimpse I had of my childhood cat being taken away to be put down. Why these memories? Why not I suppose...

I've been told these memories will fade as the years pass. Somehow the thought of that bothers me. Not to say that I want to remember these things as clearly in 20 years as I do today, but to wish for them to fade away (which I must admit I had hoped for before) seems inconsiderate to myself in addition to the memories. But, then again, the mind is a funny thing. Inconsistent and unpredictable...who knows what the future has in store.

MOM

Today I miss my mom. Don't misunderstand, I miss my mother everyday she's been gone but this week in particular has been difficult. I miss her laugh and the way she smirked at me when she knew I was trying to talk my way out of doing whatever difficult thing had presented itself. I miss her enthusiasm and her abundance of energy for random, seemingly boring tasks, that was usually rapidly spent after about an hour. I don't want to admit it but I even miss her crazy clothes that only she looked good in. The woman could take the weirdest of outfits and make them classy. I did not inherit that from her, though I'm pretty sure my sister did.

Mom had the weirdest clothes...things that I never would have worn even if you'd have paid me. I remember being very young, 7 or 8 maybe, and watching her get ready for a party or an outing. At that time we were living in a big house up on mummy mountain and she had this huge bathroom and closet (I always tried to search for Narnia in that closet and got griped at many a time for grubby fingerprints on walls and expensive clothes.) The closet was always a mystery to me because of the amount of clothing inside it. Of course, taking into account that I was much smaller then and the closet seemed much bigger than it probably was. Either way, mom had lots of clothes. She had cool looking sparkly blouses with little things sewn on them that she told me were called sequins. I had a great love of sequins at that point in my life because of my mom's clothes.
Every well dressed woman had accessories to go with every outfit...or at least that's what I've been told. Mom had the most interesting belts, jewelry, purses, shoes, you name it. My personal favorites included the brass belt with the dragon clasp, the bright green sling back heels with butterflies that would fade in and out depending how you turned the shoe, and the bright pink leather purse, direct from the eighties. These were never worn altogether of course.
I yearned to fill that purse with my treasures for years...was never allowed to of course.

These are things I think of when I remember my mother. The impact of a brass belt with a dragon for a clasp is tenuous at best. For me my mother was a eccentric gypsy, a selfless parent, a doer of deeds, a procrastinator to the highest degree, a mover and a shaker, and the best mom ever. I miss the fact that she's not around to nag me into vacuuming the house or to complain about the fact that I never put my laundry away. I miss her tendency to fill the entirety of our fridge with condiments so that our fridge was always full but there was never anything to eat...unless you liked margarita jelly and pickles with a side of mustard (4 different varieties to choose from).

With Random Purpose: As Per Request...

How many of us search for acceptance in our lives? Whether through work, family, lovelife, friendship, or a multitude of other reasons, many of us are looking for acceptance for who we are. This has recently hit closer to home for me because of a betrayal of trust from someone I held very close to my heart. But for all the pain it caused, the betrayal went deeper for it showed me apart of myself that I had not seen, or perhaps, refused to see. I had, on some level, betrayed myself.

I once heard it said that the things we hate most about other people are usually things that we hate most in ourselves. Looking at the people I have chosen to keep within my nucleus of friendship, I realize that I have underestimated myself and my need for acceptance and affirmation. This is not something I admire about myself nor wish to deal with in other people. But ironically I have never noticed how much I require from the people in my life. This leads me to wonder how I became as needy as I am. Why am i so afraid that people I love will leave me? Did it spring from highschool? Grade school? My parents? I could blame a multitude of sources for a problem that, regardless from whence it came, is still an issue I must deal with and realize within myself.

To such an end, I must confess I have no idea how to accomplish such a feat. At this moment in my life I am trying to discover if there is another me that I can be.
I am experimenting with many things in my life to see what fits. It seems that for a very long time I have been too scared to try some of the things I've wanted to do. Fear of a lack of acceptance, or rejection has stopped me in my tracks too many times to count. My resolve has wavered like a mirage in the desert and like the mirage, disappeared upon getting closer to my goal (whatever it might have been at the time.)

My time is now for me. There are no distractions to put in the way in order to hide from rejection. I have been rejected by the man (perhaps boy?) i thought I loved and I have survived. I have dealt with the loss of my mother and the emptiness that goes with it and I am still surviving. I have tried to make myself a victim in one form or another and it feels false. Though I have lately been attempting to find any reason I can to avoid dealing with myself, there is no time left.

I have recently done things that the old me would not have thought of doing. Dated men I didn't know in Highschool (heaven forbid), had a fling with a man I hadn't known for very long and enjoyed it immensely for what it was, been to clubs and danced for hours without a care for how terrible i might have looked on the dance floor, had a few too many drinks and been quite thankful I had a toilet to go home to. I distinctly remember, on the night of my mothers birthday, declaring loudly to my close friends that I would never have salami and red wine together again as i was bent over the toilet at 3 in the morning evacuating said items from my stomach. Ah memories.

But I am not these actions. I am a person who has hidden from these actions
as a way to stay safe. But I must now realize that I am more than simply what I do on the weekend or what I choose to spontaneously throw myself into.
There are things I want to do. Things that are important to my growth as an individual and a step in the right direction toward accepting myself for who I am.

"I deserve, we all deserve, to be accepted for who we are and to have a person that we accept whole heartedly" Having written this recently, I think I need to modify this in regard to myself. I need to accept myself before I find a person to accept me. How can I expect another person to accept things within me that I myself will not recognize as truth? If I have learned anything from my mothers death, it is that life is far too short to make a pretense of.

[That is what is going on in my mind David. Well, at least for now and on that particular subject. Enlightenling? Disappointing? Boring?]