picking up the pieces
today has been a weirdly pointed day. both in the sense of having lots of pointy bits, and having a central theme to those barbs running throughout.
at about midday i found myself wanting breakfast and, by some coincidence, being quite close to the shopping centre i grew up around. i figured it would be nice to go visit the place again, but the overall effect was a little disconcerting. we drove past my old primary school, and though i couldn't see most of it it felt a little weird to see more fences than i remembered from my time there. we got to the shopping centre and i noticed the library where i learned a lot of my love for reading was all boarded up; checking now it looks like it's just moved, not closed entirely, but i'm going to miss that old place in a kind of detached way. many of the food places i remembered were gone, and the one i used to like didn't have the sandwich i used to order on the menu any more.
i got dinner, later, with some friends i've been kind of distant with lately; nothing insurmountable, really, just growing isolation coupled with simple divergence of life paths. i remembered how much i've missed them, and i found myself regretting not trying to organise more hangouts. not everyone lives in the state any more, but those of us who do could certainly do something every now and then.
on the way home we talked about anime that i've never seen and shows that we're part way through but haven't touched in a while. someone talked about the friend group book of the month, and i felt bad for dropping off of being a part of the group buddy reading as easily as i did. i could try to get back into it, but i'm already mid way through several other things people are waiting on me to read.
everywhere i look are all these lost threads, things i knew and now i don't, things i followed but now i've dropped. for a long time i kept so many things all tightly woven together, huge bundles of connective strands gripped in each hand and wrapped around my limbs - connecting me to the world like a spider in my little web - stretching my touch out into the space around me through my puppet strings - dragging me around and stretching me in every direction and binding me between a thousand obligations that i hand-picked of my own accord.
a few months ago i finally tore and cut my way out of a lot of those threads; some by choice, some because they snapped under all the strain. the break has been refreshing, but desolate; freed so many of the ties i had, i feel so very unrestrained and so very unanchored. i've been fortunate enough that what i kept was enough to keep dragging me out of the house, and a new web of threads has started to form in my hands again, but at some point i need to go sorting through all of those old strings and figure out which ones i want to tie around my fingers and then my heart. not to mention, which ones i need to actually sever and move on from, rather than just slowly fraying away at over time.
it's a scary process, and i'm not really sure where to start. i have some strong hopes for the next month or so that i am not writing anywhere, but what happens after that? what happens in the long run? i don't know, really. i hope the people involved will be there with me to find out.