I drove over the bridge to Cape Cod toward the home where I grew for the first time in 10 years today. My palms were sweaty. I watched the light on the water and watched many many years of repressed memories glinting just beneath the surface. My heart pounded. My knuckles white on the shifter.
A I pulled around the rotary away from the road that would take me home and towards our destination I felt something begin to unclench. I felt myself moving away from something. Something big and dark that I've been skirting the edges of for many years.
The thing about moving through your past is that it often isn't clear if there's another side to get to. The bridges we cross don't have clear starts and ends.
But I'm learning that the roads have bends in just the right places. That I can continue to move forward and that I'll find myself brought back just close enough to push my comfort zone and begin a new phase of processing, but that soon enough the upward slope will flatten and fall again.