What defines "YOU"?

A couple of things have transpired recently that got my mind thinking and well, you know me?  I need to put it down on paper to think thru my thoughts.  First it was an awareness of people around me and what I see defines them as a person. Secondly, it was the person who talked to me about love and Lastly, it was speaking to a group of people about what’s truly important.

 There are so many things up there in our head. Look, you’ve already forgotten when you were born and how midnight-dark it was at 5:00 p.m. and what it felt like—if it felt like anything—to come into the world alone and afraid as a screaming monkey. (ha ha) You forgot how you learned to crawl on a hardwood floor on the Southside of town and the night your sister was born, as if she magically appeared one morning like a bowl of cereal would on the counter. You’ve forgotten the yellow plastic on the chairs in your kitchen and how your thighs stuck to them when it was humid and how the backyard looked overgrown.  You’ve forgotten when you climbed the dresser and it fell on you and how you wondered if you and your childhood friend were dead and, if you were, it wasn’t so bad, was it?

You’ve forgotten the way your father’s shirts smelled and the first boyfriend or girlfriend, the first kiss, your first dance. You’ve forgotten sleeping at your grandmother’s before she went to the nursing home and how you slept on the old sofa bed, lumpy and flowery smelling, and how you thought that must be how everything ended up eventually.

What we forget is so great compared to what we remember that I think there must be a holding room somewhere where it all waits to be needed.

If we remembered every detail and every heartbreak, we’d literally be walking around comatose, afraid to touch door handles and tabletops, as if they’d explode in our palms.

 If we remembered every pain our body has known, we might never get up off the sofa and, then, what would become of love?  It would wither away in some corner, and, eventually, it too would forget its own genesis.

We think that what we remember tells so much about who we are. I sit down at my computer to write, and I beg my brain to go back in time and relive things for me since I don’t journal or write anything down. What can you tell me about who I am?

I know there’s things in that holding room that offer solace and things that, when you call for them, shake with the joy of being picked. Me? You really want me? As if they were the last to be picked for the team and were so grateful just to not be left out again. You beckon those things in that waiting room, and, all of a sudden, it’s as if they were there all along, as if you never forgot what it felt like to be that carefree kid.

 The rooms that hold the parts of us we don’t need or want. The rooms that house our hurts and losses and never agains are right up against the ones that hold what we said this morning and what we ate for dinner, they hold last week’s date or that glass of wine with a friend.

The mundane and beautiful and the horrible next to each other like a collage.  Isn’t that life, though?  Everything and everyone pressing up against each other, vying for space. When there’s only so much space. There’s only so much, yet I am the one who will find the space and nurture the relationships around me with no regard to myself and the space I need.

There’s much to support the fact that forgetting is essential to our peace of mind and to memory itself. 

 How can we create space for new memories if we never forget anything?

It’s like a picture that you’ve had sitting in the window by the sun for too long. One day you look, and the picture is faded, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t make out who the person on the end is although, at one point in time, you are sure you must have held their hand and loved them. How does that happen?  It happens. We can’t hold onto everyone and everything.

I’m blessed with several friendships for over twenty-five years. At one point in time, these friendships were fresh and brick-solid, full of face time and handwritten letters. Things like children and careers and distance factor in, as well as the fact that who knows if we would’ve been friends if we had met at thirty instead of ten years old, or at 30 instead of 50.  Sometimes, I get panicky and most often want to protect these friendships, as if by not being able to maintain them over time, I am somehow a lesser human. I have somehow failed. Yet I continue to try to hold on even though it is one-sided.  Why?  Because “Relationship” defines me!

The fact is, you can’t hold onto all of it.  There’s a dinghy, and you have to choose what you don’t want to drown you. If you try and hold onto all of it, that’s exactly what happens. It swallows you, and you can’t maintain any relationship.

 When I start to feel badly that I don’t have room for anymore, I like to remember the holding room and that they’re all there. Somewhere. I try to do so much. I keep thinking that everything can fit. That if I stuff one more sweater in the suitcase, it won’t make a difference. I try and sneak in as many things as possible until I get told that I have to check the luggage. Check the luggage and place it in the holding room.

What is the holding room? It’s the place where we keep what we don’t have room for at the moment.

 Remember “layaway plans” at department stores? I’m dating myself, but when I was a kid, places like Kmart had something called a “layaway plan” where you’d put all your stuff that you wanted to buy on hold and pay for it in increments. When you finally paid it off, you could take your stuff home.

I think sometimes people would take so long to pay off their stuff on layaway that, by the time they were halfway through, they wouldn’t even want them anymore. Those jackets? So last season! The pants? I hate them now. The sheets? We got a bigger bed. I think that’s what happens to the “givers”.  I have to put relationships on hold so I can truly decide if I want to remember them anymore.

 Close your eyes. Imagine yourself in that room. If I count to twenty, quietly, here at my desk, I will have picked up exactly which things I want to remember, which things I want to take off layaway, which things I want to carry through my life and who I want to hold in my arms.

People. We’re funny like that. Always shifting and moving and changing and going from one pleasure to the next, one body to another. It’s what we’ve done since the beginning of time, and it’s what we will probably all do until we die. We want to take it all with us from one place to the next, but, in the meantime, we drop things all over the place because our arms are only so big. But because it was too much, because you didn’t nurture what was important, neglect set in.

We wake up and say Where did it all go? I had it right here! I had it right in my arm, right in my heart. 

Because I have great relationships in my life, full of love, I often hear the voice of reason:  So this week I heard from a special man who sat me down and said, “You can’t take it all and do it all and remember it all and be it all.”

I WAS REMINDED, I have a layaway plan and so much of what I thought was lost has been there all along, right next to the sound of my daddy’s voice, and the things he taught me.

The things I want to remember? They’re there. OR they’ll wait for me. It’s up to me what I want to dig out and live with. It’s up to me what I take away from layaway. It’s up to me what I take on.

 What you forget does not define you. Neither does what you remember. In fact, nothing defines you, unless you let it.  Not one relationship, not one mistake, not one accolade, not one job, not one award, not one thing defines you.  Nothing can define you. Unless you say it does.

 If you let your job be more important than relationships, then you let your job define you.  Your job can’t comfort you at night.  If you let material things become your primary focus, then you let “things” define you as a person!  Life becomes about what you have.

 I’m getting better at putting one-sided relationships in that room, to make room for the relationships and love that is nurtured on both sides.  It’s not easy for me, but I’ve come to realize it’s healthy for me to let go. If you don’t let go of the side of the pool you’ll never learn to swim.  If you don’t put down all the packages you are carrying, you cannot pick up anything new.  Letting go is the hardest part of change. It is also the most liberating.

I’ve moved on and I had to let go.  Letting go and starting fresh can be fun.   Letting go opens new possibilities and sometimes drops burdens that weigh you down.  The path ahead is open and full of possibilities.   I’ve been redefining myself my whole life to get to a better me, to practice simply Love God, love others. Change offers me the opportunity to explore new venues, offer new services, meet new people and love community.  The decision to let go happens in an instant for me.  When it’s time to let go, it feels like releasing the string of a helium balloon, it is done in seconds.  Your vision of the future improves.

Once you let go of something, once you are free of the back and forth considerations of when and how and if to let go, you are free to focus on the path ahead. You are free to tune into the rising energy of the day and let it take you where it will. A load is lifted. You can stand tall. You can walk freely. A new adventure begins because you have finally let go.

Small or large – just let something go. I noticed how hard this was because it felt so big.  This week I honored my own timing. I’ve changed my focus and am looking the direction I want to go next.  I take with me only what I need to reach that destination.  I’m leaving the rest behind. You are becoming the voice of my past.   It doesn’t mean I don’t love you, but it does mean I value who I am.  My relationships define who I am, the effort you do or do not put into it defines you.  Time to continue to be June and live life, no holding back!

I’m proud to be so loved and to love back with all that I am, I’m proud that relationship with people defines my caring heart and I’m proud that I had a father who taught me about GOD, about faith, about love and about HEART!

 From my heart to yours,  Junann Smith (6-2-2017)