Still
It's been awhile since I posted, but I have been keeping up with my creativity challenge. Today I finally rearranged and hung up framed photos that have been patiently waiting in my basement since we moved here 4 years ago. I was trying to come up with ideas on what to place in some giant poster frames we've had laying around and I reopened 2005-2007, the years Josh was gone.
I thought it would be kinda cool to collage everything I had saved, which was everything we wrote each other while he was away. Romantic, right? I started reading a few notes from flowers he had sent me "home soon, babe. i love you." and I was right back in that hell of missing him. I bawled immediately and didn't read anything else. It took me by surprise that I still have such a strong emotional response after all this time. Such a tiny little message. I feel every hopeful, pain-filled word. I see my yellow walls, my blue cabinets in the kitchen, and the bouquet of fresh cut flowers from him. I remember the years of forcing positivity so we could keep ourselves from plunging into deeper depressions. I remember the misery and the chain-smoking. So... needless to say, I'm not going to frame any of it. I don't want the reminder. I don't regret experiencing those years, but I definitely don't want to be constantly transported back there every time I walk into my bedroom. My gratitude for him is much stronger because of that painful past, but it can stay in the past where it belongs.
My new plan is to frame a bunch of the kids' artwork instead and hang it all over the stairway walls.
I thought it would be kinda cool to collage everything I had saved, which was everything we wrote each other while he was away. Romantic, right? I started reading a few notes from flowers he had sent me "home soon, babe. i love you." and I was right back in that hell of missing him. I bawled immediately and didn't read anything else. It took me by surprise that I still have such a strong emotional response after all this time. Such a tiny little message. I feel every hopeful, pain-filled word. I see my yellow walls, my blue cabinets in the kitchen, and the bouquet of fresh cut flowers from him. I remember the years of forcing positivity so we could keep ourselves from plunging into deeper depressions. I remember the misery and the chain-smoking. So... needless to say, I'm not going to frame any of it. I don't want the reminder. I don't regret experiencing those years, but I definitely don't want to be constantly transported back there every time I walk into my bedroom. My gratitude for him is much stronger because of that painful past, but it can stay in the past where it belongs.
My new plan is to frame a bunch of the kids' artwork instead and hang it all over the stairway walls.
