Yesterday to Tomorrow...

Breakups are funny.

Well, okay. Maybe more like long, drawn out, terrible, heart-wrenching affairs. They're horrifying .. awkward .. depressing buzz-killers that can seem to drag you down no matter how far removed you are from the actual event. Emotions you believed to be suppressed can be triggered by any innocuous reference to .. just about anything [there's always a link]. And then you're stuck .. "reminiscing" .. contemplating .. just generally in some ridiculous flurry of deep ["deep"] thought that keeps you from moving throughout your day like a normal human being. You get dragged down into this quagmire of lethargy .. everything becomes burdensome, painful, and stressful. You're torn between wanting to go back and fix everything and wanting to shut it out forever. You've gotten over it, but you're still treading through it all at once. It's mind over matter, and clearly the matter is winning. And just when you think you've kicked the issue .. just when you think you're at a point where you can say "it's over" and really, truly mean it .. 4th down and goal to go from the 2 yard line, and all you've got to do is punch it in to put this game away for good ..

Your dumb ass runs 98 yards in the opposite direction and takes a knee in your own end-zone.

Safety.

Yes, in the end, that's what it's all about. Safety. Security. A sense of self that trumps all doubts and uncertainty. Now, as we've learned having lived a few decades on this earth, how you achieve that sense of self is an open-ended assignment. But there's something about a breakup that causes us to seek that security in the very person we're struggling so hard to cut from our tapestry. There's something about us .. backward-looking people. Sankofa teaches us to "go back and take" .. taking from the past what is good and bringing it into the present in order to make positive progress through the benevolent use of knowledge. But when it comes to relationships .. especially as we just begin to traverse the back side of the mountain .. we look to the past for something else. We want to use it to make us whole; to fill the immediate void. We don't learn from our mistakes [quickly] and, thus, proverbially are doomed to repeat them.

Quickly.

There's no reason for me to hold on. No reason for me to open [and re-open] [and re-re-open] lines of communication that have been severed by natural means. No reason for me to make things harder than they should be. No reason for me to acknowledge or even honor conceptual promises that, in reality, are much more difficult, consuming, and potentially self-destructive than imagined. No reason for me to .. return. This is the chance to be the change that I .. that we .. saw was needed.

So, thankfully, there was a false start prior to the snap. Five yard penalty. It's 4th down. Goal to go .. ball on the 7-yard line. Clock's ticking. Pressure's on.

How will you put it away?