I admit that some movies, some scenes, some songs, some moments, still rub me the wrong way. In gen­er­al this is a good thing: the hard­er it is to let go of some­thing, the bet­ter the expe­ri­ence it was. I’m also giv­en hope in under­stand­ing that these things will pass, as all things pass, and every­thing will be put in its right place. Fortunately, this is easy to accept because of the fact that I’ve already gone through a full cycle with oth­ers. Perhaps I’ve also become accus­tomed to some resid­ual emo­tions, kept alive by the mem­o­ries of the ori­gins of lessons learned.

But all of this still does­n’t detract from the fact that some things still rub me the wrong way, as if my skin was peeled and every con­jured sen­sa­tion was a salt water burn. I can feel that sound in my ears, feel the pris­mat­ic danc­ing of light in my eyes, feel her say, “pris­mat­ic”, explain­ing the colour of her hair.

It’s not even the per­son with which I share these expe­ri­ences that makes it impor­tant, it’s the expe­ri­ences them­selves, because they mean some­thing. A change in my life. A change that may have not have hap­pened oth­er­wise.

And I real­ize that it’s not that I can’t let these mem­o­ries go, it’s that I choose not to.