Time to open and unpack the box

Long silence. Yes, I know, I somehow drowned into the deep dark waters, I thought I will never float back again. Actually, I am not so sure if I have really floated back or just given a short sweet time to surface and breathe in some air then I will be pulled back down into the deep again.

The past few months, well I have no word to describe them. 

*Absently staring at the screen for a long long long time,

yeah, no words. Just pure nightmare. Just pure darkness. Just stark black all around me.

However, I still try to rationalize what happened to me and what has been happening in my life lately. As my wise master would say, "Take a very careful and mindful inventory of all the things you have done in your life," in short, she means we have to deeply reflect.

Well, of course this task of taking inventory is both painful and freeing. I imagine, just like those people with PTSD, just imagine if you have to take an inventory of what you have done within a traumatizing event. The brain really wants to shut down all the unpleasant memories, those dark painful times, where you nearly lost it, where you only cry when you feel them again inside your heart, within the mind. I liken the experience to the early practice of medicine, where the surgeon will operate on the patient without anesthesia, nothing to numb the sharp pain, just really surrendering the whole body under the knife and to the skill of the doctor. Maybe we can call it faith.

But what I am trying to say is that recalling memories can be nostalgic and it can also be traumatic. How long can we hold the memories in our brain? Do we erase those unpleasant memories immediately? Do we keep the pleasant ones in our safest memory spot? Do we change our perception of those memories as we grow older? Do we edit memories? Are our memories authentic? Or it is already subjective?

The past few months have been totally difficult for me. I cannot even start recalling them because it makes me tremble. I cannot believe I survived and still surviving. And even now, most of the brain shuts down any attempt to remember the past weeks.

But still I will venture to make an inventory, but I am giving myself time to heal and time to recover some energy so I can go through the memories again and journal them one by one.

Anyways,

this weekend, as I continue my 20-year-research, I have been very fortunate to read this wonderful book by Leonard, a Jungian analyst. 

In one of the chapters, I read this line that resonated with me ~ living in the past.

With all the waves of change coming one by one, sometimes two by two or sometimes all at the same time, the only way I know to protect my sanity is to continue living in the past. I was reading a very interesting topic and story under the chapter Rejected Lover, when I read this line ~ living in the past.

Not that my reflection is about being rejected by a lover, no, not at all. It is that I resonated with her sentence about living in the past because as I have mentioned in my previous posts, I have moved into a new house along with so many boxes. I failed to mention that some of those boxes were still unopened from the previous move I made from QC to another place in Dasma just before the pandemic. See, if we have to compute, there were a couple of moves already but some boxes remain unopened.

This made me think deeply. What could I have been hiding from myself since I haven't gotten the energy to open those boxes and to put them in the proper places? Then after some thinking it dawned on me, perhaps I am still living in the past, I am still preserving the past by preserving the packed unopened boxes. I am reluctant in the face of the idea that I have to roll out my packed things. Just to give you a background, I was used to moving places every 3 years or so. I was used to not unpacking since I know I will move out. I never really settled in a place. I never really put down roots. Which made me think about the situation of my life right now, it feels like I am going to stay longer in a place a little longer than I was used to. Sure, when I was a young girl, I stayed in my Dasma house from 7 years old (Grade 1) to 17 years old (4th year high school), that was a complete decade of not moving. Of course, needless to say, I moved from Makati when I turned 7, so I never really stayed in one residence for a long time.

Then from 17 or 18, I stayed in QC, then Makati, then QC again for longer time (20s to late 20s) then Cebu, then BGC then QC then back to Dasma (pandemic) haha, and now, here in my current residence. 

Okay back to my train of thought, I think by unopening the boxes, I will preserve the magic of ease of moving from one place to another, however if I open the boxes then I will release the magic and I might not be able to move for a really really long time. The thought makes me scared, actually.

Sadly, things and situation and circumstances change. With a lot of deep thinking and reflection and somehow forward thinking, I feel like I have to face this fear of settling since I cannot see myself moving to another place in the near future. So, I feel that I have to slowly let go and open the boxes. Perhaps, it is time to change the items inside the box, time for new things to touch, new stuff to learn, new objects to collect or study.

Change is really terrible, but everywhere I look, it is glaring at me, time to change, time to transition, time to grow.

Time to embrace those experiences and situations we thought we never liked before.

Time to open our hearts and minds to the magic of something we have avoided for a long time, but something that is fated to be ours or fated to fall under our protection and guidance.

Time to change our perspective and embrace what we thought will never change, but still we have the passion to change it instead of just accepting it. 

Time to remember the promise of courageous spirit, that it will always help us see things through.

Time to finally confront what I have been putting off for a long time.

Time to live the life we ran away from, and while at it, try to effect little change and transition.

Time to stop running away, time to turn around and embrace the life I once knew and left behind. Since I am more mature now, maybe I can learn to tolerate it or even like it.

Maybe I will give it some time. Maybe I will open my heart. Maybe I will change my mind.

But yes, time to open and unpack the box.