Sunday, September 30, 2012

let the century pass me by.

We left Hawaii at the beginning of the month for good. And we haven't spent much time being sad. Instead, we've been celebrating the upsides of leaving, like affordable groceries ($2.99 gallons of milk v. $9.99), seeing family, driving cars that pass safety inspection, and finally being able to buy "nice" things because we won't have to leave them behind when we move. We even ordered a Vitamix and had it shipped to Utah as a welcoming gift to ourselves.

But the other night before falling asleep, I thought about the small space we left behind, and for the first time I felt sad. Real honest sadness. Chase and I laid on our backs in the dark and took turns remembering out loud. I cried, thinking about the one-room apartment that we took over with our singing and our meals and our fights and our laughter; our pictures, homemade shelves and thrift store finds. I cried because the day we moved out, our apartment was a bare white box full of none of those things, and I wish I had taken more time to remember everything before it was emptied.

I can't find the right words to explain what I felt. But I mourned for my memory. For its patchiness. Because the things I remember will never be whole. My memory of our first home will never contain the myriad of emotions that I experienced there. I can't justly recreate it in my mind. I am three weeks out, and already I forget the color of our carpet and the contents of our fridge. 

And that's okay. I can't freeze time, and i'm coming to terms with that (although if I could, now wouldn't be a bad time to do it).
But sometimes, I think, it's okay to be sad for the places and people you've left behind.

7 comments:

Sarah Jensen said...

Love this. Being newlyweds is such a special time. I'm finding this phenomenon happens constantly with a child . . . though you can't wait for them to do this/that, you also want to freeze every moment and memory perfectly, which of course you can't--and that realization brings a certain inevitable sadness. So savor sweet moments, keep taking pictures, continue making a record of important things, and accept that some of the beauty of life is in forgetting pain and remembering joy. Love you so much! -S

Unknown said...

awe you will be missed! glad you are happy though and doing well! but ps: milk is only 4.89 here silly haha

kylie said...

welcome back to the mainland. it's a hard transition.

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