Diggin' up Bones

something I wrote several months back... about how i go back over the past so much... i hate it. I am trying to make peace with it all. I know the steps are there for me to use...
i just want to relate better to the world around me.
Lately i have been sorting out the past and putting an end to what needs closure, so that those i care about can move on with grace and dignity.
I re-read this...and realize that today i still feel a bit uneasy.

Diggin' up Bones

I have this sick little life long habit. I think in some ways I picked it up from my mother. She was ,well still is, very much a pack rat. NEVER throwing anything away. Memories, photographs of days gone by, scattered and disorganized but still held on to.

I have begun to become this same very person.

I have this analytical side. I get that from my father. He analyzed software codes for mistakes. I know boring.. noticing mistakes in computer program loops and binary codes was one aspect of his job once. I just couldn't do something so mundane and monotonous but he loved it and made a good deal doing it.

I seem to have picked up some habits from him as well. I analyze things to death. I have this bizarre habit of "diggin' up bones". I guess in a physical sense I do that by studying the lives of family members that have gone before me. I like to know all I can about there lives. Sometimes I have felt disconnected from my extended family… as I grew up nearly 1000 miles from most of them…and I am the youngest grandchild on my dad's side. I hardly got to know my grandparents before they passed and have learned quite a lot about them from love letters they sent each other before they married.

I also like to dig up bones by studying the wars of the past. Particularly the American Civil War. Never before in our nation had we found such a political and economical standstill where no one wanted to back down. I find it fascinating to study what makes us who we are and why people decide to stand and fight.

One of my bizarre habits growing up was to go to the cemeteries in Marietta and take tracing paper and just rub the name of a soldier buried there. It made for some interesting art work and I just kept many of them for years. When I got sober and came online I started to begin to research some of the names. Some to no avail and others to fascinating lists of battles and stories.

Today, well I seem to dig up bones in new ways today. Well old habits but different than the others I mentioned previously. I seem to dig up the pains of my past a lot. I re-analyze relationships and conversations. Days when I felt I slipped up from being who I really want to be. I study emails and card and pictures. I ruminate over words left unsaid and some better left unspoken.

I look at yellowed pictures and papers. I study the smiles and remember and re-live the feelings. Its all sick and sadistic I am sure as I feel stuck so much in my life today.

Seems I have this habit of letting the past out. Repeating my mistakes…funny because that is EXACTLY why I study history so much. TO LEARN not to do those things. OH WELL. Seems lately I say things to convince myself of how I feel and what direction my life is going to take. I know better. I know I am not in control, nor anyone but my higher power(who I choose to call Jesus Christ).

Sometimes when my futures seems uncertain I force things. I push the friendship. I overstep my authority and play the big shot again. It's habits from the past. Old insecurities that still linger deep inside me.

I fear walking through this world alone and yet I am also bound not to settle into a sick situation just because I get scared. I don't know if ANY of this makes sense to anyone but me, I just need to type this out I guess.

I need to not look at my past as this tremendous burden, full of scars and misfortunes and people that turned away. What I need to see is the great amount of love and caring displayed by them as well as myself while I continued to figure out what this life is for.

I have an ounce of hope today. My life will improve if I keep trying. I still dig out the skeletons. I revisit old days and old wounds. I clutter my room by unloading everything and sorting it all out again… it keeps me pre-occupied from the present. A lonely time in my life that seems never ending some days.

I love my life, but I get fearful. Fearing that I may never be as close to someone else or truly understand myself and my life as well as I would care to.

I still have faith. I have to learn to trust myself and others all over again. I know better days are still ahead but today just seems long and torturous. Because I decided to revisit old scars and old mistakes and I dwelled over them all.

I will be ok. Everything will be alright. I know this to be true. I just have to sit and wait… and not over react about my past … my present or my future.

Thanks to whoever managed to read this long ramble and understand any of it…