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howeverbriefMy mother told me when I was younger that I shouldn't lose my virginity before marriage because I would be giving a part of myself to that person that I could never get back. This idea returned to me yesterday as I bought braided string cheese, of all things. It wasn't the cheese itself or the setting, of course. It was the distant memory of breakfast in a tiny apartment one morning-- string cheese, oil dipped in bread, other things I'd never heard of before let alone tasted.
The muse came and went swiftly. I was, after all, at lunch with Austin at Idlewild park eating a turkey wrap and grapefruit segments and raspberry parfait along with this string cheese. Watching the wintery afternoon stroll by, I realized the raspberry parfait had its own memory-- one of sitting next to Virginia lake eating lunch and watching the ducks.
Memory has a funny way of holding on to these bits and pieces for you, scattered showers of sensations grasped and released back into the wild. I find it interesting that certain small things still have the ability to color the day, take me back to the very moments I've hidden away. Buried so well, these memes can't crop up and hurt you all over again, right?
I forget that it's not the pieces that tear you apart. It's how you use them, how you see them after years and years of experience piled on top. It's not only about the pieces you have kept but the pieces you've left behind. Though not present anymore, the pieces left behind still impact me far more than I remember day to day.
Of all the things I've regretted, though, I've never once wanted to get back the pieces of myself that I gave away. I may have been angry at myself for not knowing what would happen, felt betrayed for being so naive, or fell apart as I clutched at the pieces that remained; but I never wished I could rekindle what I gave so freely away.
You know why? It's because I meant to give them away when I did. Those pieces were meant to leave me, to stay with the people I chose, and they took with them the person I was before. They got the person I was at the time but will never be again. Those bits may have been important to me at the time, but every tree bearing fruit must be pruned, sculpted, ripped apart by wind and rain and experience, lest that tree never reach toward the sky and flower again.
I understand what my mother was saying, of course. She wanted me to be able to give myself completely to another, to not be fragmented and confused, to throw myself wholeheartedly into the one who was meant for me. I appreciate the notion, but I know now what I never could have articulated to her back then: I can't help but give myself away. Sexual or not, there are pieces of me elsewhere that will never return-- versions of myself and memories that are changing all the time, variances and moments and incidents that were not meant to last, the casualties of time and whatever I think is right to do at that moment. It's not about presented one whole, unmarred self to the world. It's not about being able to completely bind yourself to another. It's not about protecting yourself from the great unknown and living in a glass house which can never be broken.
It's about making mistakes and stumbling sometimes; finding love where you can; bandaging your wounds when you get them; picking up the pieces; appreciating what you've had, what's right in front of you, what's still to come; holding your fractured self yet still believing that you'll be whole again; putting back together what you think you've lost forever; and not letting the pieces you've left behind define you--
It's about being alive.
The muse came and went swiftly. I was, after all, at lunch with Austin at Idlewild park eating a turkey wrap and grapefruit segments and raspberry parfait along with this string cheese. Watching the wintery afternoon stroll by, I realized the raspberry parfait had its own memory-- one of sitting next to Virginia lake eating lunch and watching the ducks.
Memory has a funny way of holding on to these bits and pieces for you, scattered showers of sensations grasped and released back into the wild. I find it interesting that certain small things still have the ability to color the day, take me back to the very moments I've hidden away. Buried so well, these memes can't crop up and hurt you all over again, right?
I forget that it's not the pieces that tear you apart. It's how you use them, how you see them after years and years of experience piled on top. It's not only about the pieces you have kept but the pieces you've left behind. Though not present anymore, the pieces left behind still impact me far more than I remember day to day.
Of all the things I've regretted, though, I've never once wanted to get back the pieces of myself that I gave away. I may have been angry at myself for not knowing what would happen, felt betrayed for being so naive, or fell apart as I clutched at the pieces that remained; but I never wished I could rekindle what I gave so freely away.
You know why? It's because I meant to give them away when I did. Those pieces were meant to leave me, to stay with the people I chose, and they took with them the person I was before. They got the person I was at the time but will never be again. Those bits may have been important to me at the time, but every tree bearing fruit must be pruned, sculpted, ripped apart by wind and rain and experience, lest that tree never reach toward the sky and flower again.
I understand what my mother was saying, of course. She wanted me to be able to give myself completely to another, to not be fragmented and confused, to throw myself wholeheartedly into the one who was meant for me. I appreciate the notion, but I know now what I never could have articulated to her back then: I can't help but give myself away. Sexual or not, there are pieces of me elsewhere that will never return-- versions of myself and memories that are changing all the time, variances and moments and incidents that were not meant to last, the casualties of time and whatever I think is right to do at that moment. It's not about presented one whole, unmarred self to the world. It's not about being able to completely bind yourself to another. It's not about protecting yourself from the great unknown and living in a glass house which can never be broken.
It's about making mistakes and stumbling sometimes; finding love where you can; bandaging your wounds when you get them; picking up the pieces; appreciating what you've had, what's right in front of you, what's still to come; holding your fractured self yet still believing that you'll be whole again; putting back together what you think you've lost forever; and not letting the pieces you've left behind define you--
It's about being alive.
