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.