The Asshole is my Kryptonite

Nostalgia?

Chapter 16

Nostalgia; a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a place  or period with happy personal associations.

The remembrance of a past experience; a memory or even a thought, can make or break you. It can be manipulated to pick you up or knock you six feet under. It can piece you back together or tear you apart. Create you or destroy you.

A happy memory could be behind the decision to pick yourself back up. It could be why you genuinely smile once in a very long time. A bad one? That could be behind a number of things.

People advise me to 'live in the moment' but I've never been one to do that - I like organisation. Knowing what's going to happen before I do it, having the time in front of me planned out - so when I catch up to it I'm ready to face it. Time is the enemy of those who don't like living a mediocre life, so you need to be careful who you listen to.

Time can be your worst foe if you give it the upper hand.

Living in the moment can be a perilous thing; you don't always keep in mind the regret you may be facing later.

It's almost like getting a tattoo when your drunk. At the time you don't think too much of it - well really you don't think at all; you just know it's something you want. It isn't until later that it finally dawns on you what you've done - and it's permanently there. Your thoughts are the needle, drawing the scenario up in your mind, pin point.

Don't get me wrong, sometimes living in the moment is good - it just depends on the moment itself and how vital the decisions you make during that time can be. The small thought of apprehension can easily stop all movement and make you stop and think about a possible harmful prospect.

A moment of patience, in a moment of impetuousness, can prevent many moments of regret.

Stress is resistance to living in the moment.

_________

It's been a week. A week since I saw his face. A week since I spoke to him. A week since I got the pivotal information that my own mother had risked her life for his mum.

But the risk was too precarious, and she lost it.

It was almost like I was numb, not specifically at the new found information but more at the remembrance of everything about the watershed moment - the grief, tears, pain.

Just all of it.

I had managed to accept the past only to have a journal in my hands, another piece to add to my puzzle, a single parent, and a grave with my mother's name on it.

I hated it.

I hated remembering. I hated that she was gone. I hated that I'd never hear her advice anymore, or have her help me choose my wedding dress. I hated being vulnerable. I hated the fact that I was so numb. I hated that I couldn't cry but merely tremble.

I hated it all.

___

I ran. I was being a coward but I didn't know what else to do. I could faintly hear the footsteps coming after me and Miles shouting my name. But I ignored it. I zoned it all out and kept pumping my legs one after the other, not understanding why the hell my car was so far away - why the more I ran towards it, the more it felt further away.

It was as though the world around me was slowly but surely tumbling on me. As though the death was the earthquake and this is no more than a painful aftershock.