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| "Sometimes, you have to retrace your steps to become comfortable with the idea that it is a memory for a reason." |
Every day that I walk into work, I learn something different about life.
I work at a truck stop on the outskirts of a small town, stuck between cornfields and one long stretch of highway.
I remember my first day there. I was almost late because I wasn’t familiar with the area (so I thought), and I couldn’t find the gas station. Turns out I had passed it twice without noticing it.
My mind contains certain memories like stamps on an envelope. I remember what the letter was about, but the stamp is the distinct moment about that day that doesn’t seem to make any sense to me until a good deal down the road.
Over a year ago, we were trying to find our friend’s graduation party, but we had passed it because I was complaining about churches being so huge and extravagant. He was driving and trying to listen to me talk, so neither of us noticed the massive climbing wall on the other side of the road that had been put up by military sergeants at the party.
We drove down the road a little bit more and once we got to the top of the hill; I distinctly remember two things happening.
1) 1) Him saying we needed to turn the jeep around because we were in the wrong place we must have already passed it.
2) 2) Seeing a gas station at the bottom of the hill.
Like a time stamp on my memory I remember thinking that it was an odd place to put a ginormous gas station. We whipped a U-ey and found the party on the way back at a park we had passed on the opposite side of the road as the church I’d been criticizing earlier.
There were open, walk-in interviews for my job now, about five months ago.
I walked into the store and filled out an application on a whim. I was hired three days later and they told me the name of the store I would be positioned at (you don’t have a choice, you go where the company sends or needs you) I walked in just in time on my first day, and met my new boss and some of my new co-workers. I spent my first day watching training videos.
My second day I hid in the back and scrubbed the floors.
And my third day, I finally got to train on my register.
A week or so into my job, I was looking out the window, watching the pumps, and noticed that the street in front of the station turned into a steep, winding hill a little ways up the road.
My stomach went numb.
All of a sudden I flashed back, and in my mind I saw a view from the top of that hill, a about a year ago sitting in the passengers side of his jeep, looking at a curiously placed gas station.
I wanted to quit my job.
You have to understand at the time, he and I had separated not long before, and I was doing all I could to start over and forget everything that had happened.
Days later I learned seven miles up the highway was his hometown.
About a month after that, I was invited to go to the bowling alley on the other side of the trees in our lot and realized it was the bowling alley where he and I had had our first date.
I started freaking out, doing the best I could to ignore the fact that I was surrounded by things and moments I was trying to forget.
A couple of weeks ago, a boy that I am seeing now visited me at work and asked me what way I was taking home. I told him I took the highway home, because I was scared to take the hill… “There are no lights.” I didn't tell him my real reasons... but he egged me on for weeks to take that way home, because it would be faster. And every time I would get to the turn out of the parking lot after my shift, I would stop and think about it, but couldn't make myself turn my wheel right.
In reality, I just didn’t want to look in my review mirror at the top and flashback. And I didn’t want to see the park where my friend’s party had been, where we had spent all day and most of the night, until we had to rush home.
Then about a week before thanksgiving, I gutted-up and decided to try that way home.
And I did look in my rear-view mirror to see the station behind me at the top of the hill,
and I did pass the park where the party had been and remembered everything that’d happened that day.
But now, I take that way home every time I work. And it isn't really even that much faster.
Because I’ve learned, from the people that I work with, that it is not a bad thing to remember, it is a bad thing to remember and not learn.
Every single person at my work has bad things going on in their lives.
For one woman, it is a constant, never ending guessing game of chancing her heart being broken once again, because she has faith in the man that has hurt her before to change his ways.
For another girl, she is too young, pretty, and fun to be the most negative girl I’ve ever met. Her boyfriend is a solid support system in her life and I myself can tell he wants nothing more than to always be there for her.
There is a man that is newly married, and already I can tell his marriage is struggling and on the verge of possibly being very unhappy.
There is another girl who settles for less than she deserves, impatient on finding the one that will treat her right.
Listening to all their stories, their pasts and experiences, I’ve been able to, as horrible as it sounds, feel much better about the events in my own life. There is always someone out there that has had things worse than yourself happen to them, by listening to their stories and observing their attitudes you can learn how not to act, how not to see life, or what not to do.
Sometimes, you have to retrace your steps to become comfortable with the idea that it is a memory for a reason.
Memories are not meant to harm you but meant to teach you and lead you somewhere else, to take you back and make you learn what it was that went wrong, so you can avoid it and help other’s avoid similar situations in the future. If you cannot become comfortable and accepting of your past, there is no way to move on into the present with the ability and mind set to accept anything and everything that is in store to come.
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