on memories and ghosts.

No one tells you that memories are tangible. That the sudden thought of something, or someone, rushes around you like water, welling up from some hidden place as if the time between what was and what is no longer exists. We are mediums for the past, for little ghosts in the present that mournfully remind us of who they once were. Their hallowed voices need no words, no language to convey the tune of loss and longing that every bone in our body breaks to.

The refrain of grief is sang alone.

So much of what we remember is out of our control. We find ourselves forgetting the every day details of living in a sea of faraway feelings. It's strange to me that our memories hold more feeling than fact. Feelings that have somehow found their way into this moment, feelings that are so familiar they are like a habit--second nature and difficult to break. They are ingrained in our felt sense more than our thought, an orchestra of emotions. We don't even notice the way we rehearse these experiences, an eternal curtain call that never never quite makes it to opening night.

Sometimes it feels like our memories are all we have left.

We carry them, packing them away in suitcases that are never far from our reach. We take them out of our own accord when we are lonely, or sad, covering us like a blanket and warming us from the outside in. We remember because it feels good, because we want to feel something, because we want to feel anything. We desperately reach down through layers and layers of heaviness to find if light and love and fullness are still there, searching for possibility despite the aching of our empty, weary hearts.

Other times, our memories destroy us. They rip through us like a tornado, violent and chaotic and completely devastating. Try as we may to resist their path, there's no outrunning a storm. So we do our best to take shelter, to block out the deafening screams of all we've lost, helplessly watching our hopes slip away with the wind until all we can hear is.....nothing.

But if we let them, some memories can orient us, ground us and bring us back home to ourselves. They can remind us of what is missing, or what we are looking for. They can continue on the spirit of a time that has passed, or honor what is no longer present. They can teach us, inform us, and help us to move forward with insight and integrity.

Regardless, they are a part of us, little maps that show where we've been and where we are trying to get to, even where we're trying to avoid.

Like breath in our lungs, expanding and contracting, holding and exhaling...

In and out they go.

They can fill you up.

Or swallow you whole.

But one thing is certain:

they are entirely yours alone.