life's candy and the sun's a BALL OF BUTTER

Don't bring around a cloud to rain on my parade

Spring break was long, but not long enough.  I was really able to enjoy myself.  I spent time with family, saw a friend for the first time in over 2 years, got my car, spent time with friends, and I got to relax.  But things are starting back up again.  School, clinicals, work.

Hey, Mister Armstein, here I am.

I am ready to finish clinicals.  I am ready to finish up my classes.  I am loving my friends.  I am loving how comfortable I feel.  I am ready for summer to begin.  The summer sun full of summer fun.  I am ready for summer nights, even more fun.  Nothing's gonna hold me back.

Nobody, no, nobody is gonna rain on my parade

It's surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.

Spring break has finally come.  No school. No work.  I'm free!

Or so I had thought.

I came back home to California for my car, to see my family, and to get a little bit of the wonderful California sun, but I am not free.  The moment that I hit the city line, it all starts coming back to me.  Every mile, another memory.  Everything that I have forced from my mind, and assumed I'd forgotten, hit me like it happened yesterday.  Things I thought had no importance, suddenly sent my head spinning.  My memory held onto the unnoticed things.  The things I would have never considered important were searing through my mind.

So I take this as a sign.  A sign that what I used to find comforting is no longer there, for I now find pain.  My safe harbor no longer exists, for it now causes harm.  My place of serenity has vanished, for it is now a place of confusion.

I'm on my way.  I've picked up the pieces.  I just have to put them back together--find the right place to put each piece.  I'm going to surround myself with people who will help me do that.  I'm on my way.

I have learned its not a matter of avoidance or forgetting, but of learning, growing, moving on, and demanding what I deserve--don't settle for the mistreatment I've experienced before.  I'm not going to be the same girl I was before, because it has permanently changed me.  I have learned from it, and I can't unlearn.  I don't want to unlearn what this life lesson has taught me.  In the end, I will find a new safe harbor- a new place of serenity.  I will go to sleep comforted and assured, in the end.

Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.