The Ghost of EVERYTHING past.......

I wish this could be exclusive to Christmas, but its not. ......

Your life follows you. And in ugly, inopportune ways. I think going forward I'm going to do things mafia style, and hire a "cleaner" to come in and literally wipe portions of my life away. As we transition from jobs, apartments, lovers, friends, whatever it may be..... there is a trail, even if it ever so slight, it exists. It could be in the simplest form of a note or a card left in a drawer for years on end..... to the extreme "I (heart) Jane" tattoo you so eagerly had scrawled on your forearm when you were so head over heels in love in your youth. These things matter. They effect each and every person that will drift in and out of your life until your last day.

Sometimes they are a sort of storybook to your life for the new person, and can be terribly misleading. Its unfortunate that we all tend to draw our own conclusions for lack of bearing witness, and in doing so the truth gets bent and skewed to a point where we may even confuse the person whose life it actually is. Recounting my life is not something I wish to do. Its unnecessary and can in no way end in a positive "whew...I'm really glad you told me all about your relationship with that guy" comment. Its the inevitable train wreck that is each of our lives, filled with carnage and one derailment after another, some minor and some significant. And they happened, and denying or trying to justify or explain them is a futile exercise in the progression of any relationship.

My dad once told me that if there wasn't going to be a positive outcome to disclosing something, don't say it. I have mixed emotions on this one..... Disclosure is key in trusting someone, and when you hold back you might as well lie.... but there is some value in knowing not only what to say, but in how you deliver information that may be difficult for someone to hear. I am the queen of saying the wrong thing. Initially, I speak from my gut.... not my heart, that would tend to be more eloquent, but deep down in my stomach where everything churns and hurts and frustrates.... and then it flies out of my mouth in a less than candy-coated manner. I am not proud of it, but its honest and I am proud of that. I have an immediate response to almost everything, and that creates the back-peddle. I hate the back-peddle. And then there are the people who when you ask them something, there is a 3 minute silence while they think of how to respond. This drives me crazy, albeit they are the smart ones. The longest silences of my life, are those spent waiting for someone I love to answer a difficult question. But, as I said, they are the smart ones. They take the time to craft a response, which then makes me wonder how honest their answer really is. If I could keep my mouth shut, and take a moment and think of what to say instead of blurting the truth, I would have saved myself a lot of miserable conversations and sleepless nights.

All in all, I can now see why people got married at 19 and just stayed that way. There are no skeletons, no deep dark secrets, no exes to deal with, nothing to trump you and your current station in your beloveds life. I'm 32..... and I'm sick of climbing out of holes left by past loves, or trying to surmount the glacier that was the relationship. And it saddens me beyond description to know I'll never be any ones first love, or their most significant love, or their first anything for that matter...... and knowing that can make any love you give seem pointless sometimes.

So today as I'm feeling sorry for myself and crying all over my meeting agenda, I need to find a way to conduct the exorcism...... get rid of the ghosts... start over with the hope that they can't haunt me forever.

All I can do is resolve to put the loss of being first behind me, and try to be someones last......