There Are Places I Remember

Hello, Unplugged Pagans.

There are songs that find you at the wrong time and somehow say the right thing. Today, for me, that song is In My Life by The Beatles.

There are places I remember. People I remember. Faces I remember. Some have gone. Some remain. Some have changed so much that I hardly know what to do with the memory of them anymore.

This weekend has been stressful. Some of that stress may be of my own creation. I can own that. I have written a few things lately that came from a place of concern, frustration, and reflection. From those posts, one could probably surmise that I am personally not happy with the direction some places seem to be going.

And I want to be clear when I say that: personally.

I am not speaking for everyone. I am not making accusations. I am not trying to pull anyone into a fight. I am speaking from my own experience, my own history, and my own complicated relationship with places that once mattered deeply to me.

But at some point, I also have to look at myself and say: I have already done the ritual. I have already done the release. I have already placed what needed placing into the fire, into the words, into the letting go.

Now I have to actually let go.

Not my circus. Not my monkeys. Not anymore.

That is easier to say than to live.

Because memory is not clean. Memory does not pack itself neatly into boxes. It lingers. It hides in drawers. It sits in old photos, old badges, old event programs, old bits of paper, old objects that once meant something. I look around my camper and I see years of memorabilia from places, gatherings, people, and moments that were once part of my life.

Some of those things still carry warmth.

Some of them now feel hollow.

Some of them remind me of belonging.

Some of them remind me of how conditional that belonging may have been.

There was a time when I was considered, quote unquote, family. I find myself wondering now what that word actually meant. Was it family when I was useful? Family when I was quiet? Family when I fit neatly into the shape expected of me?

Because lately, it seems the only time certain people pay attention is when I say something they do not like. And if I am being honest, that has felt like the pattern for a very long time.

That hurts.

Not in a dramatic way. Not in a “burn it all down” way. Just in that tired, quiet way where you realize you may have been trying to fit a square peg into a round hole for years, and the problem was not that you failed to fit.

Maybe the problem was believing you had to.

I do not know what I am supposed to do with all of that yet. I do not know what stays in the drawer, what gets packed away, what gets released, and what still deserves a place on the shelf.

But I do know this much: some places change. Some people change. Some communities change. And sometimes, the hardest part is admitting that the place you remember may no longer be the place that exists.

That does not mean the memories were false.

It means the path has moved.

Maybe I have moved too.

The wanderer in me is starting to understand that.

That is all for now.

Godspeed.