Memento mori

In the Victorian era, hairwork (jewelry made with human hair) was a popular type of literal memento mori, used to preserve a small token of a loved one who had passed away. (Gordon McDowell / Flickr)

Memento Mori. "Remember that you must die."

I don't wish to send you off into an emotional downward spiral, but the translation of this Latin phrase has spun around my head, waltzed in one ear and out the other over the past few weeks. Besides being a humorous catchphrase on Dear Hank and John, my favorite (and probably the only) "comedy podcast about death," it is a sobering reminder of something we know every day, but choose also - in some ways - not to know.

This is how I treat the reality of mortality, but it is how I treat other realities too. The reality of loss, the reality of failure, the reality of fear. I cross out the remember in "Remember that you must..." and replace it with "Ignore all signs that you must [insert unpleasant thought here]."

But on occasion, willful ignorance is no longer possible. I have to see what's directly in front of me. Quite literally. Because, like so many, I keep relics of the past.

These are actual mementos, not-so-figurative remembrances of those unpleasant thoughts. Things like a college rejection letter, a ring from an ex-boyfriend, a handwritten note in the final days of a sick relative.

Once we have established positive associations with our belongings, it can be difficult to let them go. When we couple those positives with negative associations, however, it becomes downright impossible.

There is something poetic in the notion of bittersweetness, that we cannot think of a word to describe the feeling of simultaneous sadness and happiness, thus we must associate it with a much more palpable sensation: taste. I liken the experience of looking at a deeply meaningful yet tainted object to having a better than average cup of coffee. At first it reels you in with the taste of cream and sugar, that which can render the beverage tolerable. But there's also something soothing in the slow-to-arrive bitterness. It keeps you there, lingering on the flavor. On the duality of the experience.

Tonight I threw away some things because those tastebuds had been used to such great effect that they lost their appeal. Like that fateful day when I went from having Chex Mix every afternoon to having it next to never, I had to come to an unwelcome realization that my needs were changing. I had to give up what was tiring me out.

At what point do we say goodbye to sorrowful memories, and how do we accomplish it? I don't have an answer for this, and I think that is the most human dilemma. We cannot forget. We compare our capacity for memory to other creatures - describing it as gnat-like or using the saying "an elephant never forgets." Like physical mementos, memory can be a blessing and a curse.

As with the realities I choose to ignore, but cannot forget, there are objects in my life I have struggled to let go of, hiding them in plain sight so that I can pretend they aren't there while trusting that they are just the same. On some level, they ground me, reminding me of a tumultuous past. On another, they burden me with a constant hovering dread.

So today I let go. Not fully, that takes time. But in releasing some mementos, I have given myself the permission to feel things independently and without interference. Whether my mind can trash negativity as easily as my hands can, I don't know. I'm searching for that reality most of all.

A day for old news

Jackie / Flickr

Happy Valentine's Day.

If you're looking for a little humor and fun, read my "The ghosts of Valentine's past" post from 2012.

If you'd rather experience the revelation I had on this Valentine's Day (2015), stay tuned. You're in for a treat.

I have spent the last few years of my life making terrible choice after terrible choice, and it took a long time and a great deal of sadness to realize it. I dated the wrong people, I got caught up in relationships that meant little to me, I had trouble letting go. My heart dictated my actions, rather than my head. And as we know, the heart doesn't always have the firmest grasp of reality.

Today, I had the uniquely painful pleasure of encountering a photo that served as a blast from the past, despite being decidedly present. It was like a simultaneous blow to the gut and a punch in the old cranium. You may have guessed it, I saw a picture of my ex with his new girlfriend.

This ex is old news. He broke up with me months ago and it was hard for about a minute. The mourning period was short, but the self-esteem loss was penetrating. As anyone who has been broken up with knows all too well, the feeling of rejection is more powerful than logic. For some reason, when you lose someone, your heart decides to care about that person more than you ever thought possible. Suddenly you think "maybe I did love him?", even though when you were together, he made you feel like poking your eyeballs out with an ice pick.

Too many times in my few years of being a dating-girl, I've found myself falling for the wrong people, losing them, and never feeling the relief that I know I should. The loss of a significant other should be grieved, but then it should transition into positivity, freedom, even excitement.

Instead of embracing the promise of new opportunities, I've looked to the past as a shelter. I hid myself in memories and burrowed so deep into my cave of past relationships that I stopped seeing my follow-up relationships for what they were, good or bad.

When I found myself dating someone new, the relationship became clouded by previous experiences. Nothing measured up, nothing was satisfactory. My heart was always looking backwards.

Some of my longest relationships have been with people I didn't actually care very much about. While I hoped to eventually feel a burning passion for them, it simply wasn't there from the start. Jaded by previous breakups, I saw new relationships as numbing agents.

While a relationship should be a stimulant, they were suppressants.

This Valentine's Day is the first in a while that I've been fully single. Last year, I was seeing someone (sort of). The year before, I'd been broken up with a week and a half before the holiday and was deep into my mourning period. In 2012, the wounds were still fresh from another breakup. This year, I finally realize that being alone is better than being with someone who may not be the right person anyway.

The number one rule in dating should be to save your love and enthusiasm for the right people. I want to build up my love until it bursts from my heart and allows me to fully engulf the person on the receiving end of it. Why bother with someone who can only make me feel so-so, when I know I have the capacity to feel so much more?

To my mind, Valentine's Day is really about being with the people who accept you and believe in you unconditionally. The exes of my past did not offer me that, so who cares? They're old news.

Yet by being careful and pursuing quality, I'm promising myself to have only good news to tell next Valentine's Day, and every Valentine's Day after that.

An open letter

I have spent too many days mourning loneliness. Since I turned nine and sat against the portables at my elementary school watching the boy I had a crush on chasing another girl around the playground, it has been all too clear to me that I'd always be a spectator. That girl who sits on the sidelines while other girls are chased, the one who watches movies where heroes find their damsels in distress and lay claim on them, the one who learns from seeing, but not from experiencing.

I grew up awkward, originally it was both physical and social. Eventually it became only the latter. Regardless of the situation, however, it was never in the cards for me to be a heartbreaker. I simply wasn't equipped for that sort of thing.

So it took me a long time to start dating. Almost two decades passed before I finally found a boy who'd be even willing to lay eyes on me. I was ecstatic. Then I learned he didn't actually want to date me.

I waited another half a year. Finally, I'd convinced myself that it wasn't impossible for someone to be romantically interested in me. The confidence boosted my ego enough to make me put myself out on a limb. I ended up winning over the boy I'd secretly fancied for a year. Things went well (on my side) and I set my heart on unreachable goals, getting passion confused with love and feeling the words bubbling up in my throat when I knew they were unwarranted. In time I'd learn he didn't like me all that much, and the "I love you" I felt wasn't real.

From then on I tried to be more casual. I knew that by investing myself in dating, in romance or even in boys in general, I was doing myself a disservice. I took an Economics of Gender class to remind me that a woman could be powerful and run a household. I watched Pride & Prejudice over and over again to see what real men should be like and how a strong woman turns down an unsuitable match. These were my lessons.

The catch was that I didn't seem to learn anything from them.

Even with the casual dating, I still managed to get my feelings all tangled up. And never for the right people, never at the right time. I was always too eager, too imperfect, or I'd learn quickly that I was only a rebound date. Amidst all the confusion, even I was occasionally guilty of playing the rebound card.

It took me a while to realize that even if that "I love you" from before wasn't real, it felt real enough to have distracted me from embracing present experiences.

That all melted away when I thought I'd met the right person once again. I no longer cared about that previous fascination, because I thought I'd found something more pure and more authentic. For a second time, I was run away with my feelings. I couldn't see any fault with the situation, even if it was in fact filled with errors. And I wanted to use those words again.

Through it all, I missed one absolutely unmistakable fact:

Even though those words bubbled on the surface for me, they were never even close to reaching the lips of my counterparts. In the same way I'd pushed for things to work out, I'd pushed for feelings that weren't true.

In the days afterward, it left a hole inside me where I'd always assumed love could exist and thrive.

After a long day of trying to erase the past, to forget the memories and embrace the future, I've settled on a conclusion. No boy is worth a broken heart. And even more than that, no boy is worth crying over. From someone who cries even when she's happy, this is a premise that can be hard to embrace.

An even harder one is that no boy is worth the effort.

When I woke up this morning, I didn't want to leave bed. Somehow staring at the wall and burrowing my face in my pillow felt better than doing anything. Then I talked to a friend of mine and he tried to help me. He told me that if two people really like each other, nothing will stop them from making that known. If the feelings are sincere, then there's no risk that the feelings will go forever unshared.

I didn't believe him. I still don't know if I do. And in my heart of hearts, I continue to think I will never find love because I will always be chasing it and never have it given to me in return. Like a relay race, as soon as I pass it to someone they're quick to move on and find someone else to pass it along to.

Later in the day I talked to another friend of mine, my best friend in the world. She reminded me that whenever you date someone you should always feel like you matter to them. There is no excuse for feeling unwanted. As the quote from Juno goes:

"Look, in my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person is still going to think the sun shines out your ass. That's the kind of person that's worth sticking with." - Mac MacGuff

I want to believe my friends. And I want to believe Juno's dad. So I'm leaving myself open to what lies ahead. Because in the bitterest of moments, the easiest solution is to say that I give up and refuse to open myself up to future experiences that could hurt me in the same way.

That would be weak. And to all the boys I've dated, the ones who've broken my heart and the ones where things just weren't right - I am not weak. I can guarantee you that you are not worth my thoughts, my tears or my concern. You never were.

To the ones whom I still believe there is potential with - the truth is finally out - if you want this girl, you're going to have to chase her around the playground. She's done chasing you.