A friend of mine, let's call him the UggaMugger, was lamenting to me this morning about it being the anniversary of his breakup with a Very Bad Ex What Did Gaslight Him Much.
U.M. said it was a bittersweet moment. That in reading past journal entries, it was plain to him now how very badly he wanted to make things work, and how very much they did not, in fact, work at all.
I shared a thing about my own life that's similar. I have some big relationships that I used to have, which I don't anymore. One in particular used to be very painful to me. This is with a family member who I've had a cataclysmic break with, over their intolerant attitudes, specifically around LGBT folks.
I shared this thing with U.M. about my experience, and theirs, that I want to hang on to, because I'm grateful I understand it. Hence why I'm sharing it here, with you, dear reader.
There's this scene in the movie The Matrix, where Neo, newly freed from his unwitting imprisonment in the matrix, returns there with Morpheus and Trinity, to visit The Oracle. As they travel in a car, they pass a noodle place he used to eat at.
Neo scoffs, because he loved the place, they had "really good noodles." But now laments that none of that was real.
As I told my friend, this is poignant and related to us both. Why?
Because your experiences, your past, they’re yours. They make you, you. They’re not fake, not false, not to be thrown away. You build upon them. You can’t help but do it.
The path to this moment travels through all the moments prior to it.
That's a good thing. Or it can be.