You can’t go back

It is a turning point in my life. I am at the point where I haven’t quite let go of the past, and until I do I will not be able to build a new future.

Last Sunday night in my writing group when it was my turn to read the writing that I shared broke my heart. The writing examined what home meant to me, and who the person was in my life that had been my greatest supporter. The place that was my home and the person I consider the greatest supporter in my life are gone. I can barely breathe thinking of this.

And today a dear one left a comment after my last blog post. She said something nice about one of my garden photos but I had to tell her that the green fence that she said she liked was not weathered but moldy, and breaking down, the bottom edge rotting. This will be the last year for that fence. My beautiful lime green gated garden as well as the pink gated garden were built in 2010 when I bought this house. Then the giant Magic Ship that I had rebuilt and painted pink, purple and orange were here, and a huge yard filled with garden art, 50 roses planted, the whole place was beyond imagining, people said it was like walking into a Dr. Seuss book. And then the fire happened, and The Magic Ship was destroyed when a huge tree fell across it in an ice storm, and when the house was on the market for several months in 2016 I had all of the garden art and everything out there that could be carted off taken away. And things languished and died.

This year I have tried to do a little gardening again but it is not in me. There were the days, as I wrote to dear Julia, when I worked outside until 9:00 at night and came in muddy and soaked to the skin from sweat and bitten up by bugs and was absolutely in a bliss state. I was creating a kind of paradise out here. That paradise is lost. I have struggled to try to recreate a very tiny part of it but it cannot be done. I don’t have the heart, the energy, or the money to do what I once did, and trying has broken my heart. I am through. I want it all to be over, this trying to reclaim the past. For some people being able to do just a little bit is enough. That’s not who I am. I don’t do things casually and I don’t do things by halves. And trying to do what I could and having it go badly has nearly done me in this summer. I don’t want to do this anymore. I can’t go back and I won’t be able to move forward until I stop trying.

When you can’t go back, where do you go? How do you move forward?

Well, for one thing, there is my teaching. Teaching is something that I did for decades and no, I am not able to teach in the way that I once did but the root of it, the heart of it, is inside me, it’s like riding a bike, you may not have done it in awhile but you don’t forget how, and it does not take great physical effort or a lot of money to do it. It is an inside job. And writing, this whole business of living as writer, is what I have known since I was 9 years old and escaped sexual and emotional abuse by hiding with my little notebook and pen and writing. I wrote as a child, as a teen, as a young woman, as a wife and mother, as a newly divorced woman lost and alone and afraid, as an agoraphobic woman who could, many days, not even go outside to get the mail, or groceries when the cupboard was nearly bare, but I could write. I could write when I couldn’t do anything else. Writing saved me as a child and it is saving me now. I can do it right here, in my studio, with my pugs snuggled up to me. I can teach, right here, in my studio, just where I am writing to you right now. Through the magic and the miracle of the technology available to one such as me today, I am able to transcend physical and emotional limitations. I can reach out to people across the United States, Canada, and as far away as Australia in this class of mine. We write together, we read and share from our hearts, magic is happening in this class. There is hope for me yet.

When you can’t go back what do you do? Where do you go? You go forward, with what you have, in the way that you can, now. And, most importantly, you stop clinging to what once was. Gardens lost, the person and the place that was home to you gone, the one person who was your rock but will never be in your life again, also gone, you look around you and see what is here, in this moment, right now. And that is what I am doing, that is my work now. I am taking stock, I am making a list of what is still here and what I can do, and I am going to make the most of these things.

I started this blog experiment near the end of September last year. I was searching for happiness. I think, now, over 10 months in, that the secret to happiness might be to let go of what once was and never can be again, and take a look around you at what there is now, and go with that. Build on that. Revel in that and find joy in it.

Let go, let go, let go, and move on.

I hope I can do that. I’m trying. What else is there but this? I really don’t have a choice. None of us do. What do you do when you can’t go back? You let go and you move forward with what you’ve got. It’s as simple as that, it’s all there is, there is no other choice, so let’s get on with it, I tell myself. What are you waiting for? You’ve waited long enough. As Scarlett O’Hara said at the end of Gone With The Wind, “Tomorrow is another day.” And tomorrow is all I’ve got. I’m going to try to make the most of it.