I feel I must...

Seventy pounds of paper has finally gone, courtesy of one of our financial advisor’s annual events. Seventy pounds lighter and no doubt 7 pounds heavier—full of beignets and Shawarma, courtesy of the food trucks.

Seventy combined years of stuff, or so it seems. I found paper going back 30 years and Larry 40 years, so there you go.

Is it enough? No. I feel compelled to keep going, to clear the rocks from the river of my intentions, the river of what I must do.

The other day, I pulled open a journal, sure I’d let it go, but it was full of the uncertainty and loneliness I felt before I got to know Larry. And then a few pages later, he appeared, a warm presence amidst the icy, turbulent dreams I’d written down. Dreams I can/could make a use of (in my writing) in someway today. And of course there’s Larry in those pages, so even if I feel I must, how could I let that journal go?

It isn’t the only thing. Every place I look, there are still photographs, seeping, slipping, drifting through my space, feather light, and yet heavy with emotion, obligation.

Ugh, how I hate that word, obligation. It, like should and why, is a set of shackles that binds and pins us into the mazes from which we can never escape. I will shake them off, these three Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I must, if I want to really be free.