memories lie still

I think that one of the worst things about marriage (or relationship) break-ups, is not knowing what to do with the memories.

How should one feel about the past, when it finally has become the past? Once it was the present and the future, but when it suddnely and painstakingly becomes the past, what do you do? How do you handle it?

Photos are the worst thing. I am addicted to photos. I love having them. When i was growing up, i always hated that i did not have photos of the friends that i had as a child and a teenager. When our lives parted and they went their own way, i did not have photos of them that i could look at; there was no real way to share those memories with anybody else. So when i became an adult, with a family of my own, i took lots of photos.

When my first marriage broke up, i eventually got rid of almost all of the photos i had. Many years later, i regretted that. Many years too late.

Now, i have thousands of digital photos of my time with my second wife and her daughter, and i do not want to look at any of them.

I also, thanks to the person i fell in love with last summer and got badly burned by, have some files on my computer, ones that i do not want to get rid of, but ones that i cannot even get myself to open, they are to painful to look at, too painful to deal with.

Years and years and years, many years of my life, taken from me. Memories that i do not want to face. Photos that i cannot look at. Poetry and other writings that make no sense now, they only bring pain and regret.

Lord, restore to me the years the locust have taken.

I have a bright future, but I am a man with no past (to speak of).