Like a girl taking her earrings off because she knows a fight is about to get real, I’ve taken off my heavy bracelets in anticipation of this writing session getting really real. I can’t remember a time when I had so many emotions from polar opposite sides of the spectrum simultaneously as I do now. In my conflict and reconciliation class we were asked to create a visual representation of what conflict looks like to us. My drawing was an elementary-level conglomeration of color, all clashing and splaying around one tiny point on the page; a seemingly simple dot that appeared miniscule in comparison to the explosion of color and energy around it. But that’s exactly what conflict represents to me: momentum from two opposing sides that appears powerful and full of gusto, able to accomplish just about anything, but the two sides stop at the same point, they are unable to move past something that may be small but also completely prevents resolve or merging. They cannot get past that point. Everything stops and becomes frustrated. As in my class, I am consciously trying to see conflict in a different, not so deconstructive way. At this point in my life that ability is becoming increasingly important if I want to maintain my happiness and (debatably) more important sanity.
I find myself in a place of clashing sides. In the right corner we have the person I largely became and grew into this summer. Happy, independent, confident, and energized are some of her greatest strengths, many of which still feel pleasantly new and revitalizing. In the left corner are the emotions that are fairly new, though foreseeable to a certain point. These emotions are the cause of the cog I’m currently experiencing. They’re painful. It’s a process I knew would come at some point when my spoiled life of distraction would have to shift away. The effort of reconciliation is an inevitable one that is as uncontrollable and difficult as it is necessary. It is a conscious movement of accepting that some things no longer continue on in your life, regardless of how much you do or don’t want them to continue. Sometimes your desire for the change switches daily depending on how painfully perfect the memories seem that day. That’s how my weeks have been looking like lately. I grow frustrated when I feel sadness blanket my day because I remember the uninterrupted happiness I experienced over the summer and my demands for its return yield no reply beyond, “This is life now. Figure it out.” I see now that my distractions were deliciously deceptive and there is so much to work through and resolve. I wonder how many things, big or small, we allow ourselves to emotionally procrastinate reconciling.
I’m trying to find the purpose in my current conflict rather than shut down and become unable to move past a particular point, as illustrated in my initial depiction of conflict. Many people may use phrases like, “everything happens for a reason” or “closing chapters” but all those do for me is feel like I’m trying to abruptly abandon something that meant the world to me when it deserves such better and more meaningful treatment than that. I think if I tried to just close chapters on my life I’d die from emotional bleed-out. It’s not a clean break unless it’s treated correctly by doing right by my past. Life transitions cannot be handled with the “rip it off like a band aid approach,” though in theory it would be much faster and potentially involve less time for grieving. It is hard to think about letting a period of time end when it represented largely happy and love-filled times. C.S. Lewis wrote something that has been a cornerstone that I continue to come back to when I want to throw my hands up in the air and complain about the places life takes us. “A pleasure is full grown when it is remembered. You are speaking, Human, as if a pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing.” Lewis is getting at the importance of memories and remembrance as an integral part of experiences. I don’t have to shut the door and fear that things could creep back in through the panels. Embracing all phases during and after their legacy is of equal importance if we truly value them. There are no redemptive qualities in trying to forget, only torturous feelings of nostalgia. Though it will look very different now, I can learn to enjoy past times as fully as when they were current. I can laugh with the same people and share a similar level of friendship, care, and love– just in an adjusted context. The hardest part of thinking about people or times as being in the past is that we feel like we must turn away from them altogether, but with the appropriate treatment of emotions there is much to be salvaged and re-worked in a way that can maintain the same level of appreciation. It’s an “easier-said-than-done” type of process and one that requires immense honesty and maturity but if successful only further blessings are to be uncovered.
Life of Lee Lee 