Remembering

When you close your eyes
and all you see is what you don't want to see.

The colors, textures, and scents
all fill your senses behind closed lids.

The memory has been packed up
tucked away behind the gate, boxed up, forgotten.

When you close your eyes
and it all comes flooding back.

The hours and weeks and months
working to put it behind you matter not.

Less than a minute was all it took
for the moment to return to consciousness.

Now it is all you see
when you close your eyes.

Fingers crossed, wishes on stars,
whatever you can do to put the memory away again.

The scents, breeze, piney and floral,
The colors, orange, tan, white, golden, and green.

The textures, clearly visible even now
wood grains, corduroy, denim, grassy, velvety, rough.

Maybe not today, or this week or month,
but back in the faded darkness, behind the gate, and into the box.

This memory will once again,
leave my consciousness and I will resume fighting, living, growing.

For now, closing my eyes
is going to mean working twice as hard to change the picture.

Covering up the scene,
replacing the colors, the scents, the textures.

And I will move forward
stronger than before, better able to live the life I am destined for.

Day 16: Difficulties

Sometimes, it seems like I've been dealt so many challenges in life, that getting out of bed is an effort that isn't necessarily worth it.  Thankfully, though, there are things in my life that *do* make getting out of bed worth it, no matter how hard it is at that moment!

I could pick any number of difficulties that I'm dealing with, as they're concurrent and continuous challenges in my world.  Instead, I'm going to let you into my biggest and most challenging difficulty.

My whole life has been spent catering to others, being who I think they want me to be, doing what I think they want me to do, doing what they actually want me to do, adjusting myself to fit in wherever it is that I am at the moment.  In some ways, that's an asset, as I can often adjust as need be.  But in most ways..... it sucks.  Because here I am, in my mid-thirties, and I have no idea who I am or what I like.  And this has been an incredible challenge as I try to navigate the world in which I live.  I have no idea what I like.  None.  I know I like cereal.  I know I like the color purple.  As far as who I am, I'm a teacher.  That's it. 

I have a lot to learn about myself, and what's making this uber challenging is that no one can tell me the answers to my questions because no one else is me.  My therapist's favorite line seems to be "what do you think?" which is often met with a blank stare and a sarcastic quip of sorts. 

Who am I?  What do I like?  Why are those questions so difficult?  If only I knew!

Day 16 Prompt: Something difficult about your "lot in life" and how you're working to overcome it.