My New Year’s Resolution: Leave The Past Behind by Wendy Brunner

I pack my bags, gently laying the breakables on the bottom, surrounding them with softness and comfort, folding with care what is fragile as I gather together the errant pieces of my life. I lay the bundle at my feet.
I look at all that I have been through. I already miss my former life. I don’t want to let it go but I must.
We both know this is how it must be. We can’t move forward together; I cannot move forward with you. The pain is the worst I have ever known. But I know I will be ok. It’s how it must be for my growth. Holding on never gets me anywhere.
You don’t cry, you only look puzzled, like a child. Still, I m beginning to think you understand.
I think you know you’ve had control of me long enough, and, yet secretly you would like to go back to your room. In the past, you kicked and screamed and created quite a stir, unwillingly to let me leave, crying in pain that you wouldn’t be able to survive without me, holding on, desperate. But this time you remain silent, only watching. This is how I know it is the right thing to do.
“Now it is time” I say. All these hours and days— a lifetime talking is done. It has all been said. It has all been examined, from the beginning right up to this moment. This is the crossroads.
So, I step over the bag containing my past, turn, and simply walk away. I’ll travel lighter now, leaving behind the parts of me that have kept me small and contained.
This past year life has persisted in its insistence that the ideas in my head — ideas I have carried around for decades— are just that, ideas. Reality can no longer be denied or pushed aside. And though it has seemed abstract when I have heard this from others, the part of me that has been fighting back, resisting this natural course of events has finally given up. I am through grasping at people and places to make my “old life” feel like a good fit for me. Suddenly this new me, this fresh identity actually seems tangible.
So I say goodbye, leaving my bag of heartache and losses. I leave the old version of me at the curb.
It’s time for a whole new beginning.