The past sticks like sap

So I'm back from beautiful Waiheke for a few weeks in Auckland, and thus far, it's been a rainy and rough landing. My past here is mixing with the present, pressing forgotten feelings into the folds of my brain, warping and warbling what I see around me.

A walk to the grocery store, a storage shed, a favorite restaurant heavy with the struggle and weight of times long in the past. The two years I spent in this city were not easy ones - eventually so hard that I left without a plan, just because I was worried I couldn't stay here safely.

A year has passed. A few months more.

And now I'm back.

Here, in the present, I keep telling myself, Then is not now. Now is now.

I meditate and notice feelings and try to detangle the strands of emotion that latch on, stick to every moment.

And it's helping. But it's not a fix.

Like all returnings, the past lingers, waiting, patient, intractable.

One step into a room carries with it all the previous steps into that room, no matter what our thoughts tell us to feel.

It's the strange folded way that feelings stick to a place, a certain light, a smell, the strength of sun on skin.

Each of our pasts, still here, with us. Never quite gone.

With a lot of heart,

-Steven

p.s. The best thing I saw this week was Vox's well-researched, fair, and eye-opening answer to the question: is it wrong to fly?